


What Time Taught Us

by waitforhightide



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dementors, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Marauders Friendship, Marauders' Era, Memories, Pensieves, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-02-08 15:14:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12867276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitforhightide/pseuds/waitforhightide
Summary: “There was laughter when Sirius fell through the archway, and laughter on the other side of the Veil..”Sirius falls through the Veil and emerges in another place. Once there, he realizes that the next life might be quite a bit more intense than anticipated.In which James plays the wise and mysterious guide, Sirius discovers voyeurism isn’t always enjoyable, Harry gets a gay punk-rock guardian angel, and someone keeps leaving mysterious Chocolate Frog Cards around the afterlife. But in way more emotional and serious ways than it sounds.Inspired by Sansûkh by determamfidd, this fic goes from Sirius falling through the Veil to the end of Deathly Hallows, with plenty of scenes from the Marauders’ Era, courtesy of a giant Pensieve.





	1. Prologue:

**Author's Note:**

> This was heavily inspired by [Sansûkh](http://archiveofourown.org/works/855528) by the wonderful determamfidd. I must confess I am way more invested in that fic than the actual LOTR trilogy. I regret nothing.
> 
> Ongoing holder of my feelings: MisforMoony
> 
> [Spotify playlist here](https://open.spotify.com/user/128749732/playlist/3CryWLMgVs06jORiRmU2gn) with chapter-title songs, updating with the fic.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Your mind is open but your mouth stays closed enough to keep_

_painful words from falling out._

_With every ounce of passion I speak till my lungs both billow out._

_"I'll give you something to hope for."_

_And the only thing that brings me back is love._

**_\- The Dear Hunter, “Progress”_**

 

 

There was laughter when Sirius fell through the archway, and laughter on the other side of the Veil. He was no longer sure who the laughter was coming from, only that it had shifted suddenly during his fall, which seem to take forever. When he stopped falling—you couldn't really call it landing, because he had not really hit a surface—the laughter grew quieter but did not go away. It mingled with a train horn, a repetitive chant in measured spell-Latin, the revving of his motorbike, and a whisper that he couldn’t decipher but which made pleasant chills run down what may have been his spine.

Next, surprisingly, was taste; there was pumpkin juice, a burning and pleasant whiskey, cigarettes, and a pungent taste he knew he should recognize but didn’t. He associated it with something like badly over-chewed gum. As the litany of tastes faded, he realized it was a mandrake leaf.

Then touch: raw wood, leather (again), spring wind—possibly from a broom above the Quidditch pitch at Hogwarts—and either hair or fur. This also sent a shiver down his theoretical spine.

Then there was sight, which was a rather disconcerting occurrence as Sirius was unsure he still had eyes. It wasn’t sight of himself or his surroundings, but a succession of images much like the other things. Green eyes behind glasses in the sunlight; the way firelight danced in the Gryffindor common room; a stag and a rat escorting a rail-thin teenager across moonlit grass; freckles, scattered in patterns he felt he knew better than the constellations he’d studied in school. The flashes faded into nothing again—not blackness, exactly, just… nothing.

He had heard once that smell was the strongest trigger of memory. He had never thought much about it until now, in this wherever-it-was. The smells that came to him were more numerous than any of the other memories—that was what they must have been, since there was nothing he did not recognize—and they sent fissures of emotion through him. He had begun to think everything in this place/time was muffled, somehow. The smells proved this was not the case.

There was fresh baked bread. With this smell came the memory of a house—huge, dark, old, and full of secrets. _Grimmauld Place,_ he thought. This was the first name to come back to him except for his own, and he grasped at it like a man being swept down a river would grab at an overhanging branch. The current of memory was too strong, however, and was relentless. The smell of the air before snow, which brought a succession of emotions and images as well: urban streets with shops decorated in red and white and silver, the joy that came with Christmas holidays and feasts and presents. The smell of parchment, the sound of scratching quills and murmured voices, the sense of important things overwhelming the occasional whine of boredom. Smells came in so strongly and quickly that he could not keep track, only inhale deeply—was he inhaling? Did he have lungs with which to do so?—and bask in the feelings each one brought. Freshly laundered bedding. Sunlight on green grass. A musty, dusty smell that brought with it excitement and adrenaline. _The Shrieking Shack_ , he thought.

Then there was a series of scents that went together, although Sirius could not yet place how he knew this. Old books. Chocolate. Coffee. Firewood. Summer night air. Peppermint. A smell that was sort of like a dog coming in from the sunlight. A sweet, warm smell that he recognized as someone’s skin—

_“Remus!”_

He sat up shouting, gasping for air, grasping at the newly-forming space around him. He could see again, and everything was a cream color, which was much too bright after the nothing he had been staring at. His arms flailed but grabbed nothing, and he lost his balance. This was no easy task, as he was seated on the floor.

A pair of hands caught him before he tipped backwards and cracked his head on the marble beneath him. “Hullo, Pads!”

Sirius tipped his head as far back as it would go. He saw a cheeky grin, a crooked nose he thought had been broken once or twice by Bludgers, a pair of thin, round glasses, and a pair of friendly hazel eyes. All of this was topped by an unruly mass of black hair.

_“James!”_ he hollered. James gave a sharp tug under Sirius’s armpits so his scrabbling feet could gain purchase on the smooth floor. Once Sirius got his balance, he turned to face his friend, who was still grinning widely. “I was just with you!” Sirius protested, grasping James's shoulders and holding him at arm's length to get a better look. “We were at the Ministry, all of us, we—” He wasn’t sure if it was the shift in James's smile or the dawning realization in his own head, but he stopped short and frowned. “No, that’s not right. It wasn’t you, I was with—”  


“—Harry,” James agreed, pushing Sirius’s hands off of him gently. He was beaming again. He clapped Sirius on the shoulder. “I am so glad you got to meet him, Sirius.”

“How did— is he alright? Merlin’s _pants,_ I left him there! I have to go back!” He turned away from James and headed towards an archway he had seen when he was sitting down. It had to be the way back, he had to get back, the Order was depending on him. _Harry_ was depending on him.

James gripped his shoulder again, tightly this time. “Sirius, _no,”_ he said firmly.

“You prat, let me—”

“ _No!”_ James got his hand knotted into Sirius’s shirt and pulled him away from the arch. As he did, Sirius saw that is was one of many. In fact, he and James seemed to be standing near the center of a large circle sunken into the marble floor. Around the edge, with maybe five feet in between, were white archways with silvery curtains hanging in them, blowing as if in a gentle breeze. Perplexed, Sirius stopped struggling.

“Alright, Padfoot?” James asked after a moment. “Can’t have you running off on me, now.”

Sirius shook his head, not in disagreement but puzzlement.

James nodded sympathetically. “Let’s go somewhere else. Catch up a little.”

“But Harry—” Sirius said weakly. What little color had been in his face was draining away.

“Nothing more you can do, mate,” James said kindly. “Come have a drink with me.”

Sirius’s mouth fell open. “Prongs, I… you’re…” His voice lost volume with every word.

“Spit it out, Black.”

“You’re… you…” A click in his throat as he swallowed. His voice was a creaky rasp. “You died.”

James's grin broke across his face again. “There, now the bloke’s got it! Hah! C’mon, man, we’ve got some _serious_ talking to do.”

Sirius followed James dumbly away from the archways, up a small set of steps, and down a hallway. James's chuckle at his own pun echoed the whole way there.


	2. like a row of captured ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius finds out the purpose of this particular afterlife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the prologue beta'd by [TellerQ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TellerQ).

_ The backs of my eyes hum with things I've never done _

_ Sheets are swaying from an old clothesline _

_ Like a row of captured ghosts over old dead grass _

_ Was never much but we made the most _

_ Welcome home _

**_\- Radical Face, “Welcome Home, Son”_ **

Partway down the colorless hallway, they came to a door. Sirius swore it was plain for a second, and then he realized it was the door to the Gryffindor boy's dormitory. The very one, in fact, that Sirius himself had carved animal footprints into before graduation. The plaque on the wooden door, rather than saying  _ Seventh Year Boys _ as it had when he’d last seen it, just said  _ Marauders.  _ When Sirius touched the footprints below the doorknob, he realized his and Prongs's were glowing. Moony’s were solid and clear, fresh as they day he’d made them. Wormtail’s prints were faint and barely there. A shudder passed through Sirius at the thought of his old friend.

James reached past him and turned the knob. “Nice one!” he said as they pushed through.

“Er, what?”

“The door!”

“Isn’t this yours?”

James shook his head. “I guess I’m getting ahead of myself, don’t mind me. We’ll get to it.” Inside the door was a room Sirius's mind kept trying to place and failing. It had a couple of four-poster beds, which fit neatly into the dormitory theme, but the fireplace on one wall was something more suited for the Gryffindor common room. The posters on the wall had come from his bedroom at Grimmauld Place, the one he had left as a teenager—Muggle Playboy models, Quidditch stars on torn-off magazine covers, a group photo of himself with his friends somewhere in front of the Hogwarts castle. There were a couple cushy-looking armchairs, a table with a chessboard inlaid on it, and a wicker basket that had a purple and gold Honeydukes tag hanging from the handle. The only thing that was not  _ his  _ was the window—a high, narrow, church-like thing with many clear panes and darkness beyond. He crossed the room towards it, curious to see what lay beyond. He pressed his nose to the glass, straining to see through the dark, but there was nothing.

He turned back to James, who had flopped carelessly into an armchair.

“Where are we?” Sirius asked.

“Looks kind of like the Gryffindor Tower, dunnit? Where do you think we are?”

Sirius felt very tired suddenly. He went and sat in the armchair opposite James. “I’ve no idea,” he confessed. James nodded sagely. 

“It’s a lot to take in, yeah? Here, have a Frog.” He tossed Sirius a Chocolate Frog he’d taken from the Honeydukes basket. Sirius opened it out of habit and pulled out the hexagonal card. He glanced at it, expecting it to be one he’d already seen, and started in his chair. On the card was a pale young man with long black hair and grey eyes. His robes were once incredibly expensive, it seemed, but had grown dirty with wear. The wizard fidgeted in his portrait and pushed up a sleeve to reveal a Dark Mark on his arm.

The name on the bottom said  _ Regulus Black. _

Sirius flipped the card over and read the description, also mostly out of habit.

_ Regulus Arcturus Black (1961 – 1979), born to Orion and Walburga Black, and the younger brother of Sirius Black. He was a member of the House of Black and attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1972 and was sorted into the Slytherin house. Regulus became a Death Eater in his youth— _

Sirius was fine until he got to “Death Eater”, at which point he flung the card away from himself without finishing it and unconsciously wiped his hands on his shirt. He glanced down and saw that it was a Queen t-shirt, soft and dark grey. The last time he had owned a Queen t-shirt was prior to Azkaban. This note was added without much emotion to the rest of the thoughts that swirled around in his head like the smoke from the fireplace.

“That bad, huh?” James asked through a mouthful of chocolate. He had that sympathetic tone again. It was starting to sound familiar in his voice, and that was also odd. James was never the sympathetic type.

“What in bloody hell was that?” Sirius asked, voice shaking.

“Who did you get?”

“My brother.”

James’s eyes widened. “Reg? Huh! I was not expecting that one, I thought maybe you’d get Lily or my mum or, I dunno, the Prewetts.” He popped another piece of chocolate into his mouth. 

“James, why does my Magical-fascist blood-purity-loving brother have a Chocolate Frog Card?”

“Well,” James said thoughtfully. “Here, most of the time, it’s because they’ve died.”

Sirius found he had nothing to say to that. He was grateful that the card had fallen photo-side down onto the carpet. He picked up his own Frog and took a big bite as it tried to hop away from him. The chocolate was rich and as real as he’d ever tasted. He wasn’t sure what he expected. James said nothing more, only dug into something else from the Honeydukes box. The crunch of the cellophane and the crackling of the fireplace were the only sounds. Sirius thought,  _ Besides us breathing, I guess _ , but then he paused. Listened. Held his breath and realized it didn’t feel like anything.

“I’m dead, then,” he said. It was not a question. He looked to his friend for an answer anyway, and James nodded. “When?” Sirius asked. “I mean, the battle in the Department of Mysteries, the Death Eaters—”

James was nodding. “Bellatrix cursed you in one of the rooms. She didn’t even cast The Killing Curse, in the end. Just a Stunning Spell. But it knocked you through the Veil, and so you came out here, just like everyone else does.”

“The archway? With the… the shoddy curtain in it?  _ That _ killed me?” Sirius was surprised to find he was offended. After all the things he had done—the pranks and dares, all the full moons in the Shrieking Shack, the backfiring enchanted motorbikes, the war, the Death Eaters,  _ Azkaban!— _ it was a stumble through a curtain that did it?

James was smiling as if he heard Sirius’s thoughts. Then again, he seemed to be smiling most of the time here. It was a marked contrast, Sirius realized, from the Prongs he had known just after Harry was born: antsy and tired, overworked and overstressed, with bags under his eyes and his wand always twirling in his hand. “Not the way we thought we’d go when we were kids, hm?” James asked.

“No, I—yeah. No. Not really. I guess as a kid I never thought I’d fight in a Wizarding War either, to be honest.”

James shook his head. “We should have paid more attention to Binns,” he said gravely, gesturing at the Frog card in his hand. Then he glanced up at Sirius and grinned again, and suddenly Sirius was laughing. Really, fully laughing, with great gasps of air he apparently didn’t need anymore, and that thought set him laughing even harder. James joined him, and soon the two of them were on the lush crimson carpet in front of their armchairs, letting out great guffaws of laughter and clutching each other for balance.

“Oh, Merlin,” Sirius choked out between laughs. “I f-f-forgot that Binns is d-d—!”

“Dead!” James crowed triumphantly, waving the card again, where the small portrait of the deceased but still employed Professor Cuthbert Binns—as a man, not a ghost—scowled and crossed his arms. This set Sirius off again and he fell backwards onto the floor. He looked up at the ceiling through his tears of mirth and was not entirely surprised to see that it was the ceiling of the Hogwarts Great Hall, and it showed a cloudless night sky full of a thousand bright stars.

After his laughing fit passed and he had gotten himself back into his chair, Sirius realized he was, to pardon the phrase, dead tired. The realization came when he tried to ask James something and was interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Seems weird,” he said when it had passed. “To be tired when you’re dead.”

James shrugged. “Being dead doesn’t mean your brain doesn’t need a break. There are beds in here, after all. Sleep if you like. I’ll be around when you get back.”

“Where were you… before? Before I showed up?”

“Somewhere sort of like this.” James gestured to the room around them. 

“Is Lily there?”

If Sirius had thought that James had smiled widely when seeing him, this smile changed the metrics entirely. Sirius hadn’t seen Prongs grin like this since his wedding. “She is.”

“Can I see her?” There was a hunger, not in Sirius’s stomach but somewhere in his chest, that he hadn’t let himself feel… well, ever, since James and Lily had died. However her relationship with the Marauders had been in early school days, Lily had become as much a part of his life as James had. He had often asked himself, while huddling as Padfoot in the corner of his cell, if he would have been driven quite as mad with fury if it had only been one of them; if only James or only Lily had died that night, falling pale and limp to the floor of their small, cozy house in Godric’s Hollow; if there was only one parent for Harry to miss and only one funeral for Sirius to be absent from. If he had lost only one of them, he could have mourned with the other. Having both gone and Remus against him… well, it made the prospect of a life sentence in Azkaban seem bearable. And he supposed it was. Who knows what Sirius might have done with free access to bottles of Firewhiskey and an unfortunately large collection of knives?

James clapped Sirius on the shoulder. “Not yet, my friend. But you will.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a process, you know. Rules. You’re not ready for anything but my ugly mug yet, mate.” There was that grin again. Sirius felt the disappointment form in his stomach and swallowed it down.

“Can you give her my love?”

“Of course, Padfoot; every bit of it. Get some sleep, yeah? I’ll be here when you wake up.”

That was something, wasn’t it? To have a friend to wake up to, instead of the edge of insanity that was Azkaban, or the sucking loneliness of having returned to Grimmauld Place? He nodded, unsure of what the cocktail of emotion in his gut was, and climbed into one of the four-poster beds. He didn’t even remember peeling back to covers before he was asleep.

\- - -

He did not dream, and he woke suddenly. There was no feeling of disorientation, no confusion, only blurred colors as his eyes focused. For a moment, he thought he was looking at some far-away mirror, but it turned out to be Regulus’s portrait on the Chocolate Frog card, leaning forward as if to inspect Sirius’s face through a peephole on a door. 

“Bugger off!” Sirius growled. Someone—James?—had propped the card up on the nightstand, against the water pitcher. Sirius slapped the card face-down on the table again and reached for the pitcher, ready to drain every last drop as was his custom in the mornings before realizing he was not thirsty. Nor did he have to pee, or even stretch, even though he did anyway. He glanced around the room and saw that the fire was still blazing, the window was still dark, and the enchanted sky was still full of stars. James was nowhere to be seen. 

_ Well, nothing to be learned stuck in a room,  _ Sirius thought. Habitually, he glanced down to see the clothes he had slept in and found he was still wearing the grey Queen t-shirt and black jeans. The boots on his feet, which he had no memory of wearing, were black, sturdy, and felt broken in despite shining like new. At least in death he was well-dressed. He decided to go back to the spot where he’d arrived, to take a look at the arches. As far as he could tell, they were the only thing he’d seen so far that he had not dreamed up from out of his own past.

He left the room, which he had already come to think of as  _ his _ room, and went back down the hallway until he reached the large, circular area where he had begun. He was much less distressed now, although he wouldn't quite call himself  _ comfortable;  _ even so he saw a lot of the details he had missed before. 

There were three steps leading down into the huge circular recession on the floor. Around the recession were the archways he had noted—twelve of them, evenly spaced like the numbers on a clock face. They were made of pale stone and stood at least twice Sirius’s own nearly six-foot height. His memories of the Department of Mysteries were muddled and tinged with fear and adrenaline, but he was pretty sure the archway there, full of whispers, was not as large. It was as if someone had built archways to be the opposite of each other in every way. Where the arch in the Department of Mysteries was ancient and crumbling, these looked brand new and incredibly strong. In contrast to the battered black veil that had hung in the single archway, there were shimmering silver-blue curtains in these. They drifted as if they were sheets on a clothesline—Sirius held a vivid image in his mind of the Potters’ clothesline from his teenage years—and were the same translucence as the ghosts that had haunted Hogwarts. It seemed for a moment that he was looking at a dozen Giant-sized Muggle sheet ghosts.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” James stood across the circle, at another set of three steps. His voice echoed under the ceiling, which Sirius now saw was large, domed, and scrolled with gold and silver symbols that he could not decipher.

“Yeah.” Sirius’s impulse for sarcasm and showmanship seemed to be less powerful on this side of the Veil. There seemed to be something almost profane about being cocky next to his dead best friend and a dozen ghostlike doorways. This was somewhat discomfiting and he hoped the unusual sense of reverence would fade.

“Looked in here yet?” James descended into the circle and gestured to the center. There was a smaller, darker circle that Sirius had assumed was an adornment of the floor. He approached it carefully. It was another few meters across and, as he approached he saw the shimmer on the surface.

“It’s a Pensieve!” Sirius said, surprised.

“Indeed it is.”

“I haven’t been in one of these since… Bloody hell, since we were in the Order, before yo— before I was in Azkaban.” Sirius stumbled over the words. Somehow mentioning James’s death to the involved party seemed disrespectful. James didn’t seem to mind.

“Yeah, sure!” he agreed, looking thoughtful. “When we walked through the Muggle memories of that Tube explosion.” It had been a common practice, for a time, for Order members undercover in the Ministry to extract memories from Muggles involved in Death Eater incidents before Obliviating their memories. It was incredibly helpful; rather than Muggle law enforcement, who relied on faulty verbal accounts from witnesses, the Order was able to walk through scenes from as many angles as there were memories, gathering details and trying to identify Death Eaters as they moved in slow motion through the scene. As Sirius recalled, that had been Lily’s idea. He thought it was brilliant, and recalled Order meetings where there was much shouting about integrating Muggle methods and technology into their work.

“What’s it here for, then? The Pensieve?” Sirius asked.

“Aw, c’mon, Pads!” James teased good-naturedly. “Don’t tell me your brains died with the rest of you!”

“What, we’re putting memories in there?” Sirius was incredulous, and he circled the incredibly large Pensieve in the floor. The silvery liquid, like the archway veils, seemed to be blown by a soft wind, although the air was as still as could be. “From who?”

“You, mostly,” said James. “But from me, if you think they’d help. And the Cards.”

“The  _ Chocolate Frog _ Cards?” Sirius began grinning now, his expression mirthful and almost dog-like. “Alright, Prongsy, haha. Very funny.” But James’s knowing smile didn’t change. Sirius faltered, stopped pacing around the pool of memories. “You’re seriou— _ ack _ !” He tried to cut himself off but James had already latched on to the old joke.

“Oh, see, there’s a funny thing, that! I thought  _ you _ were Sirius!”

“Very funny,” Sirius said, rolling his eyes. He was usually the first to make a name pun at his own expense, but James’s joviality in the face of his confusion was wearing a bit.

“Sorry, mate. I’ll try and be more… whatsit… sensitive? But yes, the Chocolate Frog Cards go in the Pensieve as well.”

“And they hold memories?”

“Of a sort,” James agreed. He gestured to the Pensieve. “This isn’t exactly a traditional Pensieve, but it is similar. From what I can tell, when you put in a Card—that is to say, someone else’s memory—it works almost exactly like Dumbledore’s Pensieve did when we were in the Order. You follow the memory blokes around and all. But it’s different when it’s yours.”

“Different how?”

“It’s… well. It’s intense, that’s all I’ll say. No matter what memory you choose.”

Sirius thought he could handle that. He had become an Animagus at fifteen. He had ridden a Charmed motorbike at heights most brooms wouldn’t go. He’d spent twelve years in Azkaban and survived sane. He had come here straight from a life-or-death battle at the center of British Wizarding government, killed by Voldemort’s mistress. Hell, he’d dated a werewolf most of his free life, for Godric’s sake! There was a stirring in his chest he recognized as excitement, which was a welcome, messy feeling in this spectacular and structured space.  _ I reckon some intensity is exactly what I need, _ he decided.

“Alright, Prongs! Let’s go, then. See Hogwarts, or—hell, I can show you Harry! James, you’d be so proud of him.”

“I can’t go with you, Pads.”

This discouraged Sirius only slightly, and he hoped James did not see the disappointment flicker on his face. “Fine, then, let me just—” He went for the belt loop of his jeans where, since he was a teenager, he stitched an extra loop to carry his wand like a carpenter’s hammer. His hand brushed, unobstructed, against denim, and for the first time since before he died, Sirius felt real panic thrum through him. “Where’s my—?”

James was shaking his head. “Sorry, my friend. You can’t take it with you, as they say.”

“But your—your glasses!” It was the only thing Sirius could think of that was only James’s the way that his was was—had always been—only his. James took them off and shrugged. 

“Queen. Spring Tour. Seventy-eight,” he said, without a squint to be seen. 

“What?” 

“Your shirt.” 

Sirius looked down and, with a bit of effort, read the distressed and upside down writing. James was right on from a good six feet away. 

“They're no more real than the shirt is,” said James, placing the glasses back on his face with practiced ease. “They're just props. I don't need them any more than you need your wand.”

Prop clothes or not, Sirius suddenly felt incredibly naked. He had not been farther than arm’s length from a wand since age eleven, barring his imprisonment. 

“Well, how am I supposed to—" Sirius made a gesture against his temple. The fact that he had never learned to extract memories in life, and usually let Remus pull them when it was necessary, seemed secondary to the fact that he was now fundamentally deprived of the ability should he want to.

“No fear, Prongs is here. Here, let me… alright.” James walked around the basin and stood next to his friend. He pressed his fingers to Sirius temple. Sirius was torn between the idea that neither James’s fingers nor his temple were particularly real and the incredible sense of contentedness that came from physical contact with James after so long. He was so distracted, he forgot to focus on a memory.  _ Oh well, Bertie Bott’s it is. _ After a moment, James drew his hand away, and attached to his first two fingers was a long, silver strand of memory. “Ready?” James asked.

“I solemnly swear,” Sirius murmured without thinking. Dear Godric, how long had it been since he said that? 

“I am up to no good,” James replied with a chuckle. He went down to one knee and carefully touched the memory to the liquid-like surface. Colors swam in the pool like ink dripped slowly in water. How strange it would be to see the Hogwarts grounds again, Sirius thought, which he had last seen up close from Buckbeak’s back, fleeing in the middle of the night. Even stranger to see himself as a teenager, young and whole, with no piercings or tattoos or flashbacks of war or prison. What if it was a memory of his family? Would there be positivity there? Would he see himself die? 

Before he could think too hard and decide to back out, he jumped. “Geronimo!” he cried, and he jumped feet first into the pool, eyes shut. 

There was that feeling of falling without landing again, and then a solid surface underneath him. Grass. Another behind him: the rough bark of one of the ancient trees. Then a third, to his left; warm, comfortable, solid. Wait, solid? Wasn’t he in a memory?

Sirius opened his eyes, confused, and found himself entirely present, and hip-to-hip with Remus Lupin.


	3. it broke your throne and it cut your hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sirius discovers that recollection without action is worse than no recollection at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes an emotional breakdown, abuse/violence directed at inanimate objects & at human beings, and explicit and implicit self-harm (cutting), and blood.
> 
> Beta’ing for this chapter as well as most of my writing ever: [MisforMoony](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MisforMoony)

 

 

Baby I've been here before  
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor  
I used to live alone before I knew you  
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch  
And love is not a victory march  
_It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah  
_ **_\- Leonard Cohen,[ “Hallelujah”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttEMYvpoR-k)_**

 

 

There were fewer places Sirius had ever felt happier in all his fifteen years than on the grounds of Hogwarts on a Saturday afternoon. It was the perfect time, far enough away from Friday that the remnants of the previous night’s adventures were usually scrubbed out of his system by sunlight and a good breakfast, but not far enough into the weekend that the Sunday megrims had time to settle in and make him feel jittery and anxious. This time was so prime, in fact, that the amount of times Sirius had done schoolwork between eleven in the morning and 4pm on a Saturday in his entire school career could probably be counted on one hand. The second week of term his fifth year, he pointed out this fact to Remus, who was sandwiched between himself and James, with a slightly bemused Peter trying to concentrate on his Charms textbook through their laughter.

“I have _never_ done homework on a day as beautiful as this!” Sirius declared in an overly distressed voice.

“You wrote an entire History of Magic essay on that day over Easter last year,” Peter pointed out. “The day that was so nice that Prongs actually got me on a broom.”

“And right before both our birthdays in second year,” James reminded him, gesturing to Remus, whose birthday fell less than three weeks before his own. “You did a month’s worth of Defense homework just so we could spend time planning that never-ending party.”

“You only avoid doing homework on Saturdays because of the asinine amount of detentions you have, Padfoot,” Remus commented dryly. He didn’t look up from the book he was hunched over, following the densely packed words with the tip of a dry quill as he read.

“Al _right,_ alright! Ugh!” Sirius tossed his hand over his eyes and flung himself dramatically over the laps of his friends, knocking Remus’s books to the grass and bumping his head against James’s elbow. There were cries of indignation, and laughter from Peter who rolled clumsily out of the way of James and Remus’s kicking feet. Sirius took his hand off his eyes and as he did, there was an odd sense of _doubling,_ like _deja vu_ in reverse somehow.

In a mental voice that sounded like his but did not come from him, he heard, _This is it, my God, this is the moment._ Then he opened his eyes.

The angle of his aggressive flop onto his friends’ laps made it so that James’s head was mostly out of his vision. Instead, he had a clear view of Remus, and that view was so saccharine somehow that it changed something in him.

Remus’s pale face was surrounded by a soft corona of gold. It filtered through his hair in sunbeams that looked like the God-has-cometh clouds in miniature. Sirius saw dust motes in the light. Had he ever _actually_ seen dust motes like that, like the kind you see in photographs and movies? His jaw was highlighted by sunlight also, a golden streak tracing the structure of his face. Sirius was suddenly viciously jealous of that light. Remus was laughing softly with his head tipped back and his eyes shut, and Sirius saw the beginnings of the laugh lines he hoped Remus would have at fifty, the small creases around his eyes and his mouth. The laughter took some of the tension out of his face, un-squinted the eyes that were normally compensating for glasses he needed and couldn’t afford. His profile was striking, a ridge of scar tissue emphasizing the strong slope of his nose. His eyelashes were so long Sirius thought he could count them. And his mouth, god, his mouth—his lips were parted slightly in laughter, and it seemed impossible that, according to the few bits of personal information they had been able to glean from Remus, no one had ever thought to kiss them.

The moment seemed to be frozen in time, a photograph of the mind, and Sirius thought, very clearly, _Ah, bugger, I’ve fallen in love with Moony._

Then time restarted in a rush, a bicycle chain picked back up by its crooked gears. His mates’ laughter was loud in his ears; James was playfully shoving at his shoulders and Peter was scooting through the grass on his stomach to attempt to retrieve Remus’s Restricted Section library book before it picked up moisture from the grass. Remus himself was trying, but failing, to reach over Sirius’s raised knees and pick up the book as well, still laughing.

“Bugger off, Padfoot!” Remus cried jovially. The good weather was infectious, it seemed. “Either I read this book and translate the awful Old English or you do. If you want to manage to become an unregistered Animagus in this lifetime, that is.”

“I—what? Oh, sure, alright.” Sirius felt dazed, as if he had just awoken from a deep sleep. This was not the first time his world had shifted dramatically on its axis. Sirius was known for intense reaction, but what some people failed to realize was that those reactions were born from equally intense feelings. When his perspective had been fundamentally changed before—when he was sorted into Gryffindor, or he first spoke to Andromeda about disagreeing with his family’s politics, or when he had first seen the ground from the back of a broom—it had always been because of something he had _felt,_ something he had _experienced_. This time, it was as if something had been revealed to him in the afternoon light, something that had been there the whole time, whether he was there to see it or not.

“Kneazle got your tongue?” James asked. He had his _concerned_ face on, one eyebrow raised and a small frown line above the bridge of his glasses.

“I’m just so—” _Awestruck._ “—entranced by—” _Remus John Lupin._ “—this absolute _Galleon_ of a day, Prongs!” It was difficult to keep ahold of his mouth, which wasn’t new. The fear that he would accidentally proclaim out loud that he thought one of his best friends was the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen, however, _was_ new, and it brought with it a strange deficit of confidence. He must have compensated well, because James snorted laughter and then took his stolen Golden Snitch out of his pocket, but the feeling that words might come galloping from his mouth without his consent did not fade.

He picked himself up off of James’s lap and settled himself back against the tree trunk. He was once again hip-to-hip with Remus, and this time he felt like there was no way Remus did not feel the heat of Sirius’s skin through the fabric of their robes.

 _Of course, he does, idiot,_ he told himself. _And he does every other time you flop onto his lap like an over-enthusiastic lap dog as well._

“Sirius.” Remus’s voice, quiet as usual but unconcerned. “You’ve got grass in your hair again. Here, let me—”

Long, sure fingers out of the corner of his eye. A soft touch near his temple. As Remus pulled the grass from his hair, Sirius felt a touch on his cheek. It felt like it must have left a path of sunlight in its wake.

“Thanks.” Sirius’s voice cracked. He thought James gave him a look, but perhaps he was imagining things. Things other than the thought of Remus’s hands touching him again, on his hands and arms and face and chest…

“Anyway,” Remus said with a getting-down-to-business tone they had all begun calling his “prefect voice,” even though none of them would probably be considered as prefects when letters came the following summer. “It looks like the hardest part of the Animagus process is the one where you have to keep a mandrake leaf in your mouth for an entire month…”

Sirius wasn’t sure what was more absurd: the idea of chewing mandrake-flavored gum for thirty days, or the fact that his first concern was how he might manage to kiss Remus without spitting it out.

 _Face it, Black,_ he thought, not unhappily. _You’re doomed._

 

* * *

 

The mists of the Pensieve swirled and Sirius was once again on the marble floor of the archway hall. He scrambled to his feet. He heard James hurrying towards him.

 _“No!_ _Stay away from me!”_ he roared, flailing his arms rather aimlessly. He felt suddenly heavy, as if he had been dropped on another planet and was not quite equipped for its gravity. The remnants of whatever emotional buffer he had acquired when he landed in the afterlife burned away like old parchment: hot, fast, and with little smoke. He didn’t want James’s worrying, oddly fatherly hands anywhere near him. He looked up, wishing he was anywhere but this spotless hall, that he could tear something to pieces. Immediately he saw a set of Goblin crystal resting on the floor, likely dreamed up by whatever mental fucking house-elf ghosts populated this place with things out his memories, and if they had the Black family crest on them, well, that just made it all the more satisfying as he pelted the set, piece by piece, to the floor. The walls of the hall were rather too far away to hit well, but he did aim for—and hit—several corners and posts of the archways, sending prismatic shards spinning through some of the silvery hangings.  

 _“Fuck!”_ he shouted when he ran out of glassware to break. He finally turned angrily towards James, who was standing a safe five feet away with an impassive look on his face. “What the fuck was that, James? That was no memory, I was _there!_ I _saw_ —” He stumbled over his words and began pacing, hands twined into his hair, gripping like it was the only thing keeping him above a rough and tumultuous sea. “Is this it?” he demanded finally.

“Is what what?” James asked. His voice was neutral, and therefore infuriating. Sirius was in front of him before he remembered making the decision, his hands balled up in James’s shirt, and he didn’t know exactly what he was hoping to do until he rushed forward and slammed James against one of the pillars of the archway closest to them. James’s head whipped back and would have possibly made an uncomfortable _crack!_ of breaking bone, had there been any real bones to break. As it was, James didn’t even look dazed. He only looked down mildly at Sirius—something only possible because Sirius had lifted James’s feet from the floor in his anger.

“Is this all I get? Memories replaying like movies while I sit stuck in my own damn head, knowing everything goes wrong and not being able to _change_ anything?” He let go of James without waiting for a response, paced away for a few strides, and then turned back around and drove his fist against the post where James’s face had been a moment before.

Nothing happened. There was no pain, only a fleeting sense of pressure. His knuckles did not grind together, his skin didn’t scrape the smooth stone surface, there was no bright red blood for his eyes to focus on. He tried again, shouting and swinging both fists at the pillar and feeling no more opposed than if he was boxing the kind of Muggle punching bag you’d find at a rummage sale. He punched until he thought he’d go mad, and nothing happened. His arms didn’t tire and his breath didn’t come any faster.

Sirius had always prided himself in letting life roll off of him like water off a Grindylow’s back. When he left his mother’s house, he did so without taking anything more than his school trunk and broom. During the war, the first war, he’d never even had a proper flat. Sometimes he’d stayed at Lily and James’s, until Harry was born and James went into hiding. Sometimes he crashed at Order headquarters or safe-houses between tasks. There were even late, dark nights at Remus’s, before things got bad and stopped making sense. In the fallacy of his youth—which he had not even realized, as a disowned heir fighting a war, he even still possessed—he thought he would have time for that later. When his laugh lines mapped his face the way he had predicted Remus’s might do. Always, he thought there would be more time.

Now he was here, with his best friend who had been dead for fourteen years, reliving his youth through a Pensieve in the afterlife as opposed to a photo album in the Three Broomsticks. There was no more time, only that which had already passed. The imperviousness was gone, and he had no idea what to do about it. He wanted so badly to hurt his unreal body so he could stop hurting in his very real soul. He knew it was real, because he had lived for over a decade in fear of it being sucked out.

Howling in ways that reminded him uncomfortably of Azkaban, he dropped to his knees, reached for a shining piece of crystal at his feet, and wrapped his hands around it, heedless of its jagged edges. He waited for the splitting feeling of his palms, the warm gush of blood down his arms, but there was nothing. _Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing—_

He couldn’t find words for this: his desire to relive those shining moments fighting with the pain from knowing that he wasn’t really there and couldn’t change anything, the desire to know what went wrong anyway, and the need to feel all those regrets in the ways Azkaban and both Wars had robbed from him. Before, when emptiness threatened, there was always a way to fill it: motorbikes, drugs, booze, sex, the Order. When those weren’t enough—and when there was no Remus around to help—there were other things. Fights with cousins and Slytherins (the former a smaller circle within the latter, he supposed), pranks that carried with them an increased risk of injury. And, of course, there was the knife in his potions kit when things got really, achingly empty.

Now everything just ached.

Without thinking too much, Sirius did what he did best: he ran.

He hadn’t been sure he would still be able to turn into Padfoot proper until he did so. Whether this meant Padfoot was an innate part of him or that he was another prop, like the Goblin crystal or his Queen shirt, he didn’t much care. He only knew it was a way to make the emotions seem smaller and less intense.

As a dog, the too-pale room was less distressing on his eyes, but he traded this abnormality for an almost complete lack of smell. He was expecting the remnants of his own human scent and the forest-y, warm smell of James, but there was nothing. _More nothing,_ he thought. _Not real. None of this is real._ He bounded up the steps, paw pads slipping on the smooth floor, and took off down the single corridor at full speed. When he reached the door, it was ajar, as if it knew he was coming. He nosed it open and burrowed under one of the beds. Somewhere in the back of his mind he felt shame at this, cowering under a bed like a child, but the dog in his mind dampened it considerably. In fact, the dog in his mind approved of close, dark places with only one point of entry.

Besides, darkness had always been Sirius’s refuge in life. Why would it be any different in death?

 

* * *

 

Some time later, after his canine nose seemed to almost burn with lack of smells and his ears twitched at the silence—it seemed that the room was much more responsive for his human needs for sensation than it was to his dog form—Sirius heard someone open the door.

“Sirius?” James called softly. “Padfoot?”

He didn’t mean to, but emotion welled in him and he let loose a pitiful whine. He heard James’s footsteps come closer and braced for the sudden light and fear that came with exposure, but nothing came. Instead, James sat down on the floor somewhere near the bed. The floor creaked under him, and Sirius wondered vaguely if that was because _he_ expected it, or because James did.

“I know you’re under there, mate, it’s alright. You can stay. I’m just going to talk at you for a bit, alright? One bark for no, two for yes.”

Sirius whined again, the human hidden deeply in the canine, the way he had learned to do as Dementors whispered fears and apocalyptic futures to him inside his head. Under layers of simple animal fear and wariness, Sirius the person wanted James to stay.

In life, Sirius had been wretchedly miserable his first few nights in the Gryffindor dormitory. It was a foreign place compared to the guttering gaslights and dark tapestries of Grimmauld Place. In the photographs of the Slytherin house dormitory his family had pointed out to him, the water cast moving, green reflections on the walls and the fire seemed dwarfed by the all-encompassing glow. The Gryffindor Tower, in all its embers and flames, all its warmth and soft carpet, was nothing like it, and nothing like home.

All he could do his first two nights was hide in his bed, curtains drawn around him, enchanted lights glowing cooly around him to remind him of home, and try not to cry loudly enough for anyone to hear him. On the third night, James Potter, the “blood traitor” young athlete with the crooked smile and raucous laughter, came back into the room and flopped on his bed sometimes after midnight. Sirius expected him to rummage around and start his small, whistling snore, but instead Sirius saw the faint yellow glow of wandlight through his curtains.

“You don’t have to talk,” said James, with the unsullied confidence of a pre-teen boy. “I can just sit here if you like. But you seem lonely, so I figured I’d read for Charms by you. You know, instead of us both being alone. That seems rather silly.” A pause. “Oh, I suppose you need a way to answer where you can not talk. How about…” He knocked on the wood of one of Sirius’s bedposts. “One knock for no, two for yes. Okay?”

James’s knock vibrated briefly through Sirius, and with it came a sense of comfort, as if James had lent some of his courage through the mattress. He knocked twice on his headboard.

“Alright, then,” James said happily. When Sirius finally stopped crying and got up the courage to peek through the curtain several minutes later, James was leaning against the side of the bed with his wand rolled into the center of his Charms book, still glowing. He was fast asleep.

With the idea that James was a bed-vibration away, Sirius had also slept.

Now, in this space beyond the Veil, Sirius hid under that same bed as a dog, and James sat against the edge, with no wand and no Charms book, but every bit of confidence and more than he’d had as a child. _God, children. We were all just children for so long._

Sirius barked twice, short and whining. It was loud in his own ears, sound waves trapped under wooden bed frames and rather luxurious mattresses. Even so, he swore he could hear James smile.

“Okay,” James said agreeably. “So you’ve died. You’ve landed yourself in an afterlife that isn’t really like anything we’ve heard of before. Where’s everyone else? Lily, Mum and Dad—” By this, of course, James meant his own parents, as Sirius could not imagine anyone he’d rather see less than Walburga Black. “—and all the adoring fans, right? Did you know there were people who wanted you to get out of Azkaban? Not Order folks, right, some of them did too, but like, _delinquent youths_ who thought you being a mass-murderer was _cool._ ” James snorted rather derisively at that. “I suppose you fit the image, with your black leather and incredible hair. Peter would have had quite a few less fan clubs, I’d imagine.”

Two barks. _Yes._ Sirius felt his body relaxing despite himself. If he’d been human, he might have even chuckled. Once. Maybe.

“Anyway, none of these people are here. You’re stuck with me, some batty arches that aren’t attached to anything, and a bathtub that makes you fifteen again. Try pitching that to Zonko’s next time you’re there, mate, I bet you’d make a fortune! Not that you’d need it, maybe donate it to Remus instead… Who, by the way, this dodgy bathtub is making you see in all his glowing, adolescent glory, as if it happened yesterday, and making you fall in love with him all over again. Am I about right?”

_Yes._

“Now, like everything ever created, this is sometimes shite. Actually, it’s shite a lot of the time. And as humans—and dogs, I suppose—learn to do, you—what’s the word? Escape? Compensate? You want to do a bunch of things that are not _that_ thing and just forget about it, right? But the problem with this really strange afterlife is that there _is_ nothing else. Just you. And me, but I’m not quite the same, yeah? It’s okay, you can say so.”

This last was addressed after a rather long pause in the middle of James’s otherwise speedy monologue.

Two barks again, but softer this time. _Yes?_

“So what’s the point? Well. You want to hear what happened when I died, Pads?”

_No… Yes._

“I spent probably a year of time reliving everything I’d ever regretted in the Pensieve. You wouldn’t _believe_ the things you forget as an old bloke—you’re practically twice my age now—” Now that was a strange thought. _I’ve become an old man,_ Sirius thought, with wonder rather than scorn. “—so you’ve got even more regret to dwell on, I suppose. And you will. It’s part of the process. And then I was fed up with it, and I ignored Mom and stormed right on through an archway. D’you know what it did? It put me right in front of Harry.”

 _Harry?_ Sirius whined in confusion.

“That’s what the arches do, they put you in the present the way that a regular Pensieve puts you in other people’s memory. And you’re just as useless there. And it hurts even worse. So what’s the point, right?”

_Yes. Right._

“Here it is, Sirius, and you’re going to hate it, but that doesn’t change much: Remus Lupin is going to die, and you’re probably going to be the one to guide him through the not-so-pearly gates and into this same blasted hall with the same stupid, flapping curtains and the same Pensieve big enough to hold everything the Hogwarts ghosts have ever seen. In case you haven’t noticed, mate, there’s a war on. Again. He’s down there right now, holding Harry back from following you through that archway. He could die right there. Harry could slip out and tumble right through, and I’ll probably meet him first, but you’ll see him eventually. Who do you want to be when you do?”

A whine. _What?_

“Listen, man! You have the entirety of your life and most of other folks’ to walk through like a library full of books. You can see anything that happened to you, ever, as many times as you want. You can replay every argument you ever had with Moony— eventually from his point of view as well as yours. You can watch Peter escape or play Quidditch in my backyard or ride your motorcycle for the first time as often as you want.

“For the first time in your life, Sirius, you have time to sit down with any damn emotion you like without a Death Eater or an arsehole or fucking _Dementors_ threatening your life. You can look at your life and see how you got to spend it, especially with that gangly, pale, brilliant werewolf with a self-deprecating laugh and a heart bigger than your damn head. And when he gets here, you’ll be able to forgive him for hating you even while he loved you and you’ll hope you can bring him through this shite so he can do that too. So come on out, mate, and this time maybe try not to give me a concussion when I doubt I have a brain to still be concussed. Okay?”

There was silence for a long time, just the crackle of the fireplace probably conjured by James, as Sirius in dog form could neither smell nor see it. Finally, he wriggled himself out from under the four-poster bed, and then he was sitting with human legs crossed on the plush carpet with James. He was entirely unsurprised to find that he had tears in his eyes, although he had not cried in years. There was an ache in his chest that was almost pleasant in its deep and profound painfulness. During the war, things had been so fragile and complicated that he’d taken a day at a time, never knowing if it would be a day where Remus was alright or where he was in a dark room with the curtains drawn. In Azkaban, he hoarded his best memories in a psychic lock-box as best as he could. After his escape, it was all about how to try and live at all without being captured or killed.

“Alright?” James asked. He did not move closer or even gesture towards Sirius, and seemed to already know the answer to his question.

“Did you see?” Sirius managed thickly.

“The memory? Some. You know, I never quite understood what you saw in him that way, but I think I do now. Here, I mean.” He drew a memory from his own forehead and dropped it into his cupped palm. He held it out to Sirius, who saw in it a red-haired girl with green eyes reflecting golden lanterns like smaller versions of the lake around them. Lily Potter—Lily Evans—as a young girl, arriving to Hogwarts for the first time. Her face was full of awe, and Sirius recognized this as James’s moment, just as that afternoon in the September sunlight had been Sirius’s. James let the memory flow out between his fingers where it diffused into silver mist so fine it was nearly invisible.

Sirius opened his mouth and found that he was speechless. James nodded sympathetically and they sat in silence for a while, tears dropping with small, almost imperceptible _paps_ onto the carpet. When he finally spoke, his voice was still choked and sticking in his throat.

“Pull another one. Another memory.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He finally looked up at James and hoped his old friend could understand some of the things. Perhaps it was time to let things soak through.

“It can be overwhelming, Sirius,” James warned. “To do a lot of memories all at once. You have as much time as you need. Hell, maybe more. You don’t have to do this now.”

Sirius shook his head firmly, a dog shaking off a sudden rainfall. “I do,” he said. “I need to do this, James. I _want_ to do this.”

James took a deep breath but didn’t argue. He stood and offered his hand to Sirius and the two of them made their way back to the hall of archways. When they descended into the center, James gestured with his hand and Sirius nodded. James touched Sirius’s forehead gently and came away with strands of memory on all five fingers.

“Are you sure?” he asked again.

“As I’ll ever be,” Sirius agreed. His voice still trembled, but his eyes were dry. James placed the memories in the Pensieve and Sirius leaned forward and pressed a hand to its silver surface. Then he was gone.

 

* * *

 

The Astronomy Tower in the daylight, according to some of Sirius’s Map experiments, was once of the least traveled areas in the castle. After discovering this, Sirius took steps to keep it that way. Privacy was hard to come by in a building with a couple hundred people, and anything he could do to scrape some up, he did. He was easily overwhelmed at times, and it was good to have a place to go. So he had cast a Silencing Charm on the corridor, a Repellant Charm on the stairs, and a complicated booby trap on his side of the doorway which involved a Dungbomb, a set of Exploding Snap cards, a charmed ink bottle, and a bag of Gobstones. The latter had been stolen from Peter, who still had not noticed them missing. Sirius figured they served him better here than they served Peter sitting under his bed and gathering dust. As long as he had been setting it up, the booby trap had never been triggered, and he had never wanted it to go off.

Until now.

The air had chilled quite a bit in the weeks since he had realized how strongly he felt for Remus. His emotions, on the other hand, had not. Sirius cared not at all about the “gay or not?” question. He had, not inaccurately, cultivated a reputation as quite a heart-breaker over the past four years, and it had never occurred to him to be particular in his choices about blokes, birds, or anyone in between. What he _did_ care about were the Marauders. They were like the World Cup Quidditch team or the Hogwarts founders—they were only a proper concept when they were all together, and Sirius couldn’t think of an easier way to scare off a friend than coming onto them opposite to their preference.

He had no idea of knowing what Remus’s opinion of gay blokes even was. He had never commented on Sirius’s exploits, in any direction or related to any gender. He’d never expressed romantic interest of his own in any category, either. As far as Sirius knew, the Wizarding community did not discuss orientation at all, and he knew Remus had been all but cloistered from his Muggle side of the family after contracting lycanthropy. Sirius, on the other hand, had been spending summers anywhere but his mother’s for several years and had rarely felt more comfortable than with the gay Muggle street punks he found at concerts and biker bars in London. Growing into his queerness was as comfortable as growing out his hair and painting his face in scarlet and gold for Quidditch matches.

These fears of Remus’s reaction mixed uncomfortably with his feelings for Remus himself. Sirius had found himself often staring at Remus without realizing he was doing so. Several times, James or Peter had waved a hand in front of his face to get his attention back. Once, in Transfiguration, he was called on by McGonagall to answer a question about the six ways to spot Transfigured counterfeit money, and he almost answered with a particularly vivid daydream where Remus was sucking pensively on a sugar quill while asking Sirius to help him study for an exam that involved skills like kissing someone while their roommates were two meters away and unbuttoning a shirt with one hand.

What came out of Sirius’s mouth was something like, “About halfway, I think, before you would have to adjust your position… of…. uh, examination… for the other three hallmarks, Professor.”

“Next time, consider keeping your brain in my classroom, Mister Black, as opposed to wherever it was just then,” McGonagall replied coolly over laughter from his classmates, but he could have sworn there was a dart of her eyes in the direction he had been looking— _towards Moony, of course,_ he thought—and that there was a ghost of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

It took some adjusting, but Sirius was beginning to think he was getting his wanting mouth and fanciful mind under control when October’s first full moon came.

It was ritual for the non-furry Marauders to rotate through the hospital wing the day or two after the full moon, bringing with them a mix of chocolate, homework, and what James called “Honors Work”—either Animagus research or map-making supplies. This particular day, Sirius had served a short “detention” with Slughorn between classes for exploding Snape’s finished Sleeping Draught—of course, this was Slughorn, so it turned into two hours of Sirius talking as little as possible about the Noble and Most Ancient Blah Blah Blah and trying not to vomit into the cauldrons he was scrubbing—and so he had not seen Moony all day, but it was made up for in the evening when Peter had to do remedial Charms work and James had mandatory Quidditch drills. So that afternoon it was Sirius alone, puzzling over a problem area on the Map involving the moving staircases on the fourth floor. He had begun to think perhaps Remus would sleep through dinner, and was about to sneak down to the kitchens and get some early preparations off the house-elves when Remus tossed and turned a moment in his sleep with a small groan. He kicked the sheet part way off of his bed, exposing a bare, partially-bandaged chest, and Sirius—who had already stood up to start his search for food—felt his knees buckle.

Never had the smooth planes of a skinny, pale, adolescent chest been as magnetically fascinating as they were in that moment. The bandages with traces of red blood and raised, healed scar tissue were an odd companion to the lean muscles and sloping, prominent hip bones. Sirius saw Remus’s ribs but also the strong muscles in his chest and shoulders, cultivated by monthly rounds of fighting against himself like a Confunded boxer.

A thick feeling bloomed behind Sirius’s sternum and made him shake. He suddenly wanted to touch Remus more badly than he had wanted anything else in his life. The impulse seemed half driven by lust and half by an intense desire to _help,_ to heal the claw marks Madam Pomfery had covered and to wash away the bandage adhesive and blood left on Remus’s pale skin. He wanted to touch the old scars until they were smooth rather than jagged and angry. He had never thought of himself as a caregiver and had always been disinterested in others’ illnesses as long as they weren’t around to pass on the germs. He wanted to _take care_ of this—to make it better. To let Remus know that he was here, and that he wanted to pick up the pain so Remus didn’t have to carry it alone.

And then there was that lust. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, but it washed over him with an intensity that was unexpected and huge. He wanted to touch, to explore—

He reached one hand out and laid it on Remus’s chest. He felt the slow rise and fall of it as he breathed, but what really amazed him was the warmth and the softness. Sirius gazed, mesmerized, at his hand over a latticework of scars and was about to move it along Remus’s chest when Remus stirred.

“Seeryus?” he mumbled, squinting.

Sirius snatched his hand back from his half-naked friend, a flush of embarrassment and possibly even shame coursing up the back of his neck and burning in his stomach like whiskey. Before Remus could open his eyes against the brightness of the hospital wing, Sirius was gone, leaving behind his empty chair and the papers that had spilled from his lap.

Sirius had run to the Astronomy Tower, and had been there since, watching as the light leaked slowly from the sky and the surface of the lake, exposing bright stars. He had practiced conjuring water for Transfiguration, named as many constellations as he could, connected those to family members, and tried to redraw the entire Black family tree from memory, and he was still here. Alone. He kept looking at the door and jumping at every small noise, waiting for his booby-trap to trigger, but there was no one.

He had hoped that—well. It didn’t matter.

Finally, when it was past midnight and the cold air was too much to handle, Sirius went back inside. When he got to the dormitory, Remus’s curtains were drawn around his bed and there was the soft glow of wandlight, but there was no greeting from him.

Sirius, after much tossing and turning, dreamt of scars like glowing lights and the smell of sunlight.

 

 

 


	4. sorrow, the unpredictable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius is impatient, and discovers that he cannot escape himself, even after he dies. How unfair is that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes more unstable emotions and more violence directed at inanimate objects. Sirius has some maladaptive coping skills, okay? 
> 
> There is a hallucinatory/unreality section that also includes: questionable sanity, injury, blood, torture, body horror, a non-con kiss between an adult and a teenager (15), not-canon character death, and canon character death.
> 
> uuuuuuuh yeah it’s a dark angst chapter I’m really sorry. But it’s hella long so… That’s good, right?
> 
> This chapter is perilously unbeta’d! Please let me know if you find errors that MisforMoony didn't catch in ems re-read!

__ Fellow dies with no one there to care for him  
__ Wonders what the world is like beyond the room he’s living in [...]  
__ Sorrow; the unpredictable has found a hand to hold  
__ Absent into the fog coming home  
__ Maelstrom; you are my only God  
__ Absent into the fog, I succumb to your every want  
_ And in the middle of it all  
_ __ I saw you there

**_— Citizen, “[In The Middle Of It All”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnBirxokYbY)_ **

  
  


The departure from the Pensieve was slower and calmer than the last time. The silver mists swirled and there was a sense of re-assembly rather than ejection. Sirius stood at the edge of the pool, feeling both regretful and confused.

“Where’s the rest?” he asked, assuming James was behind him somewhere, but as he turned around to look, he found the hall empty. “James? Prongs?” His voice echoed back at him, probably because he expected it to, but there was no answer. He glanced at the Pensieve, ready to jump back in to his 14-year-old body and skip through the twisted feeling in his gut to get to the good stuff, but realized he needed James to extract the memories from him. He could always jump in and just see what happened, but he hesitated. In life, a risk would end in success at best and death at absolute worst. He knew that. He had made peace with that almost as soon as the Sorting Hat howled out his black-sheep insides to the entire Great Hall. In death, the worst was as unknown as the blank mists of the Pensieve. If he jumped into nothing, would he be trapped there? That would be worse than this; even reliving mistakes was better than reliving nothing. Feeling nothing. He thought of the absence of smell he’d encountered as Padfoot and shivered.

Reflexively, he looked down at his clenched fists to check his injuries from the shattered crystal earlier, but his skin was unmarred. In fact, his hands were cleaner and less gnarled than they’d been since he was still in school.  _ Of course, _ he thought.  _ Because they’re not bloody real, are they? _ Sirius felt suddenly exhausted again. His desire to go back into the Pensieve drained out of him like the memory from James’s hands earlier. He just wanted to stop.

He went back to his room because he had nowhere else to go. There were no doors in the hallway before his, and none he could see beyond it, despite the fact that the corridor stretched out until he could no longer see it at all. Part of him—the part he had thought of as his inner dog, full of energy and curiosity at its best—wanted to walk down it until he found something. Considering what he’d seen so far, he could go until he got bored and probably never tire. But the existential exhaustion won out, and Sirius went back to his bedroom/dormitory and decided to take inventory of the space instead. Minutia was always good for distraction—it was one of the reasons he would sometimes braid his hair into intricate crowns for the entirety of Sunday only to have it whipped loose on the Quidditch pitch, helping James practice on Monday; or why he tackled the prodigious task of trying to clean Grimmauld Place when he had been reasonably certain he could have created a safe room that barred entities from the rest of the house. Anything he could touch, hear, smell—anything he could fall into with his whole being was good to keep the ghouls and banshees out.

He started with the bookshelves that lined the room as they had in the Gryffindor common room. Some of the titles were familiar, by both wizards and Muggles:  _ The Standard Book of Spells, Vol. I-VII; A History of Magic; Watership Down _ (he remembered reading this one, suggested by Remus for unrelated reasons, with a kind of fearful fascination while preparing to be an Animagus—would he be a prey animal like this?);  _ Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas  _ (one of his and James’s favorites) _.  _ He also saw titles he had heard of but never read, such as Kerouac's  _ On The Road _ and  _ Guide to Advanced Occlumency, _ both of which had been on Remus’s personal shelf the last time he’d looked. He had always wanted to read them, but like so many things in his life, he had assumed there would be time. 

“Maybe now there is,” he mused to himself. He wasn’t aware he was speaking out loud as he pulled a book called  _ Fight Club _ from the shelf. The motionless cover illustration of a bar of yellow soap embossed with the title indicated it was Muggle-made. As far as he knew, he had never read it, had never even  _ heard _ of it, but here it was on a shelf that was apparently created from his mind. He opened the book to a random middle space, half expecting to see blank off-white pages, but to his surprise there were words. He scanned them and found that they were, in fact, coherent English words and not Runes or gibberish.

_ "I want you to do me a favor. I want you to hit me as hard as you can. _

_ I looked around and said, okay. Okay, I say, but outside in the parking lot. _

_ So we went outside, and I asked if Tyler wanted it in the face or in the stomach. _

_ Tyler said, "Surprise me." _

_ I said I had never hit anybody. _

_ Tyler said, "So go crazy, man." _

_ I said, close your eye. _

_ Tyler said, "No." _

_ Like every guy on his first night at fight club, I breathed in and swung my fist in a roundhouse at Tyler's jaw like in every cowboy movie we'd ever seen, and me, my fist connect with the side of Tyler's neck...  _

Hardly aware he was doing it, Sirius flipped to the front of the book and, without looking up, felt around for the arm of a chair and tossed himself in. He was thinking of London in the summer of 1976, when he more or less fell off the face of the earth when he wasn’t sleeping off the hangovers at the Potters’. He thought of blood in his mouth and bruised knuckles and necks and the taste of cigarettes and cheap Muggle whiskey. 

By the time James returned, entering with a perfunctory knock, he had almost finished the book. James said nothing, just sprawled himself across another armchair and waited until Sirius finished staring at the last page and set the book down on the floor.

“Alright?” James asked.

“I want to go back in,” Sirius said.

“What, no  _ hello _ or anything?”

“Hello, Prongs. Welcome back, thank you for gracing me with your dead-but-corporeal presence. I want to go back in.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean,  _ why? _ ” Sirius was on his feet now, pacing with one hand tangled in his hair and the other gesturing emphatically with each word. His head was filled with thoughts of lip-shaped lye burns, black eyes, fists swinging in warehouses and basements. All of this was mixed with memories of the Shrieking Shack, Padfoot and the wolf clashing in claws and teeth; with fights he’d had in Remus’s flat before Azkaban, his fist driven through thin sheetrock partly to see the horror and disgust that crossed Remus’s face. Sirius wanted to fight something. He wanted something to fight  _ him. _ He had never empathized with a character quite as much as the narrator and Tyler Durden. He wondered if perhaps that was why he’d avoided reading fiction in life.

“Well, I know my slang has become a bit vintage, and perhaps it hasn’t aged well, but when I came up here, ‘why’ generally meant ‘what is the reasoning behind the thing you just said?’” James was impassive, twirling a disc the size and shape of a Galleon between his fingers, one of the fiddling habits he had during his life. This disc, however, seemed to be a smooth piece of green glass, approximately the color of Harry and Lily’s eyes.

“Oh, shut up and extract a memory from me, why don’t you? No one says you have to stick around,  just… shove it in a vial or something and let me go back in!” Sirius tried to keep his voice level, almost joking, but he knew some of the desperation and frustration was bleeding through, like fire light through light curtains.

James seemed not to hear him, focusing on the glass piece in his hand and trying to get it to pass over his middle knuckle. For a moment it seemed he was going to be able to pass it rather seamlessly to the next space between his fingers, but the glass slipped and James caught it one-handed and cursed. Then, as if remembering Sirius was still in the room, he looked back up at his friend.

“My question stands, Pads. Not that I’m trying to lord it over you or anything, but you do kind of need me to get at your memories. Not just you, mind—” James assured Sirius rather hurriedly, as Sirius seemed about to argue with some vigor. “—everyone needs their guide or whatever to extract their memories at first. It’s just part of the rules.”

“ _ Fuck _ the rules!” Sirius shouted, somewhere between a jubilant exclamation and an exasperated growl. “Who made these damn rules anyway?”

“No idea.”

“Doesn’t that  _ bother  _ you?”

“Not much bothers me at this point, my friend,” James said, and his voice was grave rather than mirthful for once.

“Why the fuck  _ not? _ ” 

“It’s hard to hate unbreakable rules when living without them got you and all your friends killed, you know.”

“Well what happens when I don’t follow them, then, huh? What if I jumped into the Pensieve without you?”

“That’s not a good idea, Sirius,” James said, sounding alarmed.

“Why not? Are the Rules going to come down and smite me? Some Muggle god going to hit me with a heavenly bolt of lightning?” He looked up at the starry ceiling and cried, “C’mon, you bastard! Take your best shot!”

“Do you want an answer, or—”

“I want my goddamn life back, and if  _ you  _ won’t  _ give  _ it to me, I’ll go find it my bloody  _ self _ !” Sirius’s last word was punctuated by a wide sweep of his arm that sent an assortment of Honeydukes packages flying off a high table. A Chocolate Frog carton hit a nearby chair leg and burst open, sending the frog hopping wildly across the floor. Other than the quiet thud of its jumps, there was a ringing silence in the room where they both let the implications of Sirius’s sentence spin out like unwinding string, and then Sirius sat heavily back down on the red overstuffed armchair.

“I don’t have your life, Sirius,” James said quietly. He had righted himself in his chair and was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped under his chin. “Neither do you. That’s why you’re here. I’m just here to help you figure out how to li—how to sit with that.”

“What about the archways?” Sirius asked suddenly. He was looking at the floor rather than James. “You said they showed you Harry.”

“They did. But the archways don’t work like the Pensieve.”

“What do you mean?”

“It starts up for you when you step through. Time, I mean. It’ll catch you up to what’s happening down there—back home—without you missing anything, so we’re all on the same page, but you can’t control it after that. You can choose who you see, eventually, but it plays out in real time once you step through. You can’t skip through any of it. If someone’s walking for four hours, you watch them walk for four hours. If you step out, you miss whatever happens next. There’s no way around that.” He paused, and when Sirius didn’t reply, he said gently, “Do you really want to watch Harry and Remus mourn for you right now?”

Sirius clenched his teeth. In truth, he hadn’t ever thought about it. The first war left no time for mourning as friends, classmates, and Order members died like Marlene McKinnon, or had their minds wiped like Frank and Alice Longbottom. He thought Lily had gone to Marlene’s funeral, but he couldn’t remember. And had any of them ever visited St. Mungo’s to see the Longbottoms? Had they ever gone to check on their son? He certainly had not. It always felt like a kind of dark and thrilling adventure story, everyone fighting and falling around them— _ them _ being the Marauders, a group had by then included Lily—while they continued on in a protagonist protection bubble, the same as every hero in every childhood book they’d ever read. 

Then Dumbledore started approaching people personally, and that bubble popped like so many translucent, fragile things, like dreams and futures and love and the possibility of living to thirty. Everything started to fall apart. By the time James and Lily died, Sirius was so consumed by hatred and hurt and war that the only thing he could think about was death: theirs, which had been protected against with such ceremony and yet come so suddenly; Remus’s, which was a an ever-present question, Schrodinger's death—was Remus alive or dead when he hadn’t been home in a week? A fortnight? Over a month?—that made him feel so much he thought he might shatter; his own, which for the first time in his life felt impending; and most of all, at the end, Peter’s. Somehow they had come to the point where nothing would give Sirius solace other than murdering the man who had killed the Potters—the man who had once been a schoolboy with him, who had helped him decipher tea leaves for Divination and had made him a dittany balm infused with Murtlap oil that helped heal the scratches that he sustained as Padfoot under the full moon. There had been no time for grieving then, only acidic, sick anger that bordered on psychosis.

Then there was Azkaban. Dementors and screaming, nightmares and red-grey colors from Padfoot’s eyes. More rage, escape, determination, terror, another war—nowhere was there space for grief, not even in the deep hole of his stomach that was always growling with hunger as he listened to the white mad whisper of the sea. Could he handle making the first funeral he attended his own, the first death he dealt with the one that he could never recover from?

“So what do I do now?” he asked finally.

“Read another book or something,” James said mildly. “Catch up on all the music you missed. Take some time to yourself. I’d say a couple of days, but that doesn’t mean much here.”

“The archways—you said—am I missing things? The War, Harry, M—everyone?”

James grinned. “Being dead affords you some privileges, Pads, and videotaping the parts of the real world you miss while adjusting to being dead is one of them.”

“Video—?”

“Don’t worry about it. Find something interesting to do, okay? I’m not going anywhere for a while either, Lily’s—well. She’s busy in an archway, as a matter of fact.”

Sirius felt as if he has more questions now than when James had begun talking, but that bone-deep tiredness still clung to him, and he realized that just the thought of the marble hall with its curtains and deep pool was unpleasant. He returned to the bookshelf instead and found a worn volume of Mary Shelley’s  _ Frankenstein.  _ He pulled it out with a tug to his heart and flipped open the front cover to find it inscribed exactly as expected:  _ For Remus— sometimes the creator finds himself to be the monster, while the monster is the one who shows us what is real humanity. I love you, stitches and all. ~Mother, September 1970 _

A memory surfaced, this time with no need for a Pensieve.

  
  
  


_ Sirius stood by Remus as he unpacked his things deliberately and neatly the second day of term of their second year. In what Sirius considered a stroke of wildly good luck, term began with the feast on Friday night and left everyone to their own devices over the weekend before they went back to schedules, rules, and homework. Rather than take advantage of this as his dorm-mates did, Remus seemed happy to unpack in the quiet of the dorm. _

_ “C’mon, Rem!” Sirius whined. Remus rolled his eyes—Sirius knew no one called him Rem, and even if they did, Sirius was not quite in nickname territory with his classmate. They’d known each other for a school year but were not close. Sirius wasn’t sure quiet, reclusive Remus was close to anyone. “James and Peter followed one of the house-elves down to the kitchen and figured out how to get in there. We want to go check it out!” _

_ “That sounds… interesting,” Remus said without looking up from the neat stack of school books he was alphabetizing on his bed. _

_ “Right? So come with us!” Remus either did not hear or chose not to answer as he pulled his wand from the deep side pocket of his robes. With a small frown of concentration, he raised his wand and said, in his equally deliberate voice, “ _ Locomotor  _ books _ !”  _ His books lifted from his bed as a group and he guided them carefully to the small bookshelf next to his bed.  _

_ “Wow! That was really smooth!” Sirius exclaimed, impressed.  _

_ “Thank you,” Remus said quietly, and Sirius thought there was a hint of color rising in his pale face. Sirius often forgot Remus was a Muggle-born on one side, and that magic wasn’t necessarily a daily occurrence in his household. He supposed his compliment was more powerful than intended. _

_ “So, will you come with us?” Sirius asked, hoping to cash in on the moment.  _

_ “No, Sirius.” Remus moved on to lining ink bottles and potion ingredients up on the top of the shelf, labels facing neatly outward. Sirius flopped down onto the floor and examined the books. Most were school books, and there was a copy of  _ The Tales of Beedle the Bard _ that looked like a well-loved childhood favorite. There was a volume among the others that seemed newer, less fuzzy and rounded along the edges. The title was one Sirius didn’t recognize. _

_ “A modern-day Prometheus?” he asked, mostly to himself. Wasn’t that the Muggle god who set something on fire…? _

_ “Hm?” Remus muttered, distracted. Then he seemed to hear what Sirius had said. “Oh, yeah, that’s a Muggle book. From my mum.” _

_ Sirius slid it off the shelf as Remus turned back to his trunk and rummaged in it, looking for something. The book seemed to be written in older English, reminding him vaguely of dumb House of Black biographies and memoirs, but he caught that there was much more emotion in this one. When he checked the inside of the front cover, he saw that Hope Lupin had written a dedication for her son. _

_ “Why’d your mum give you a book about monsters?” Sirius asked. _

_ Remus popped suddenly out of his trunk and grabbed the book back out of Sirius’s hands. “That’s  _ mine, _ Sirius!” It was the loudest his voice had been since returning to school, and Sirius thought there was real distress on his face as he put the book back on the shelf with more force than necessary. _

_ “I—sorry.”  _ Big mouth you got there, Black, _ he thought. “I didn’t mean to pry.” Remus said nothing, only stayed kneeling in front of his shelf and looking at the floor. Sirius thought perhaps he was crying. “Er… if it makes you feel better—which it probably won’t, because I’m a git—I know quite a lot about monsters. There are a bunch of ‘em living in my house, you know, and that doesn’t even count the things that  _ aren’t _ people.” _

_ A small noise from Remus that may have been a chuckle. Sirius went on, encouraged. _

_ “Listen, let me take you down to the kitchens. I have a way with house-elves. I bet I can find you some of that chocolate cake from the feast last night.” _

_ “...you think?” Remus asked after a moment. _

_ “Won’t ever know if we don’t try and find out.” _

_ “Alright,” Remus agreed. He stood, accompanied by popping from his knees, and swiped a hand across his face. Sirius pretended not to notice. _

_ “Excellent!” Sirius said. They went down the dorm stairs together to meet James and Peter in the common room. _

  
  
  


Sirius had watched that same copy of  _ Frankenstein _ move from shelf to shelf, from Hogwarts to Remus’s small bedroom in his mother’s house to the small flat he’d rented after leaving school—with help begrudgingly accepted from both Sirius and James. No matter what else he had done in school or during those tangled, war-torn years after Hogwarts, Sirius had never touched the book again. Even after knowing Remus’s complicated relationship with the concepts of monsters and humanity, he always felt that shock and anger from Remus at that violation of his privacy and his secrets. But there was no point in avoiding it now, was there? Technically, this wasn’t even the same book. As far as he knew, Remus’s was still in the bedroom he had claimed at Grimmauld Place with the other meager items he managed to hang on to while constantly moving from place to place after he got behind on his rent again or had to flee from anti-werewolf landlords.

He glanced up at James, who had also picked up a book and was paying him no attention. With a deep breath, Sirius opened up the book and began to read.

* * *

 

He read  _ Frankenstein  _ twice, trying to wrap his mind around the archaic language after the modern stream-of-consciousness of  _ Fight Club  _ and something like fifteen years without opening a book. Once he had gotten through it, Sirius found he had awakened in himself a hunger for reading that he had not felt since Hogwarts. There was a divine pleasure in falling deeply into stories that had nothing to do with one’s own life, and he had somehow forgotten this in his years of living nothing but his own maddening, depressing, and ultimately useless life. Afterwards, he leapt to  _ Dracula, _ laughing at the dramatic depictions of vampires that were entirely unlike the pale, plain, and dryly humorous vampires he had met in the Hog’s Head over the years. Then he read a Muggle history of British punk music in the 1970s and 80s, a biography of Gellert Grindelwald, and a wizarding novel called  _ Here There’s Another, _ about a witch from Toronto, Canada and wizard living in Dublin, Ireland who found themselves each in possession of one of a pair of enchanted journals which allowed them to talk to each other in writing. Of course, they fell in love, despite the wizard’s long-term illness, and the story ended in a hospital with Healers and tears.

This last story wormed its way into him, and despite his general dislike for romances, he found he could not put it down as he had planned to do. He kept telling himself he would set it down once James got back, but James had not returned yet this time. Sirius instead read until he finished it it and set the book down on the small and crooked tower of volumes accumulating at his feet. There was a trembling in his limbs, as if something was vibrating heavily next to him or he had put his finger on a short-circuited switch and been lightly shocked. He ran a hand through his hair and began to pace, and at some point noticed the torn Chocolate Frog carton on the ground. He thought of his argument with James— _ I really did think about it, _ he said earnestly to the imaginary James in his head—but he was already leaving the room.

When he reached the edge of the Pensieve, he simply took a step off the edge, trying to hold memories in his head.

* * *

 

He was nothing and then he was thoughts. He had no memory of leaving any other place or arriving here. In fact, he wasn’t sure he had memories much at all. There was nothing, which was becoming a disconcertingly common occurrence, as he thought he was once someone who had recently been human, and therefore defined by sensory experience. Then there was mist. It was the color of the Pensieve— _ what was a Pensieve, again? _ —if somehow all light had been sucked away from it, leaving it a dull, matte metal grey rather than it's usual semi-brilliant sparkle. In the grey, there were dark, swirling colors like those of a Muggle motor oil spot on wet pavement, but no shapes.  _ No shapes I can see, anyway,  _ Sirius thought, at once aware of his own existence as a corporeal being again as well as the fact that he was unsure he was using his eyes to experience much at all. It felt strangely like the fog existed in his own head, and his brain was projecting it outwards like a Dark incorporeal Patronus or a Muggle fog machine at a particularly smoky rock show. This feeling only worsened when he closed his eyes to stave off dizziness and found he could still see the rolling pewter clouds. It was as if he had no eyelids. 

In his youth, perhaps the first thing he would have done was shout, but twelve years in prison bookended on either side by wars had made him a more cautious man, whether people like Mad-Eye Moody and Molly Weasley believed it or not. He kept his surprise and discomfort confined to a creeping shiver that rolled down his spine, leaving the back of his neck tingling rawly. The impulse to call out and see if anything would answer was still there, but it was tempered by memories of Dementors, boggarts, ghouls, and Death Eaters, all of who could answer instead of an ally.

Sirius took a step forward, vaguely surprised to find he was not floating amidst the gunmetal air, and found a floor had solidified under his feet—feet which until now he had not been able to see. The stone beneath him was reminiscent not of the Hogwarts castle but of the stone floors of Azkaban, worn to uneven and furrowed smoothness by decades of half-mad pacing and fitfully sleeping bodies rolling across them in threadbare robes and rough blankets. Another spine-tingling shudder of revulsion crawled up his back and settled with a sick feeling under his tongue. He pulled his wand from his carpenter’s loop and lit it wordlessly. He held it above his head and out of his view, and so didn’t notice it was the wand that had carried him through school and not the one Dumbledore and Ollivander had procured for him at Lupin’s, after his escape. 

The wandlight finally revealed shapes in the mist, not unlike the ones he had seen in Alastor Moody’s Foe Glass. Finally, Sirius chose to speak.

“Show yourself!” he called hoarsely. At the sound of his voice, the languid movements of the mist seemed to speed up. There were whispers and titters somewhere behind him, and figures moved around him in fits and starts. 

_ “Homenum revelio!” _

Most of the shadows backed away, still laughing, but one drew closer. Sirius directed his wand at the darkening shadow, a Stunning Spell ready on his lips, and came face to face with Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.

“You!” Sirius exclaimed. He was unsure if it was gratitude or accusation in his voice, but it was not surprise; Dumbledore often appeared in his most confusing moments. Often, in fact, he had instigated them.

“Me,” Dumbledore agreed.

“Where are we?” A small pause. “And how did we get here?”

“I must admit I am unsure,” Dumbledore said. “On both counts. Although I may be able to enlighten you on your third question, which no doubt follows along the lines of, ‘Why have I found myself here?’” Dumbledore did not wait for an answer, but pressed on: “The answer, my good man, is of course that you chose to be here. It is perhaps the most worked-for destination you have ever reached, Sirius.”

“And where would that destination be?” Sirius asked. He had not lowered his wand. Dumbledore only shrugged. “Hang on—you mean this isn’t Order business then?”

Dumbledore smiled. The smile was too wide, his teeth too bright, and Sirius realized it was because the smile kept growing. It began to slice through his wrinkled cheeks like a hot knife through butter. It reached past his ears, and almost around to the back of his head, somehow showing straight, white teeth the whole way. Then the top three-quarters of the old man’s head tipped back like the lid of a box. Dumbledore’s body crumpled and folded, a loose sock sliding down a thin ankle. Beneath it, something grey and scabby began to emerge from the neck. A tendril of ice and a sense of indescribably panic slipped itself around Sirius’s heart, and he reacted before he even saw the thing’s sightless, gaping eye sockets.

_“Expecto Patronum!”_ Rather than the great shaggy dog, the mirror to his Animagus form, there was only a thin silver cloud. This did not seem to matter much, as the Dementor-Dumbledore dissolved into dust and blew away in an unfelt breeze. Sirius ran until his lungs burned, feeling the cold draft that chilled his insides and not his skin, and thought incohrently. _Not Dementors, please, God, please, Remus, anything but Dementors, please Alastor, Albus, I’ll do anything but them, anything!_ Eventually, his legs grew weak and there were black spots in his vision. He stumbled and managed to sit rather than fall. A quick inventory of his surroundings seemed to indicate the Dementors were gone. Before Sirius could so much as take a relieved breath, he heard his name, coming from the dark clouds.

“Sirius! Siri— _ augh _ !”

The second shout was cut off by a cry of pain. Before the echoes had finished fading from his ears, Sirius was running towards the source of the sounds. There were few voices Sirius would be able to recognize, but this was one of them.

“Harry!  _ Harry!”  _ As inscrutable as the mist was, it did not seem malicious in itself and parted before him as he blasted it with his wand.  _ “Harry, I’m coming—!”  _

_ “Sirius, stop—!” _

He was close now, he could tell. Harry would be ten long strides away, maybe fifteen— 

“No, I’m coming to get you, I—”

“Stop! You’re hurting me, Sirius,  _ please _ !”

Another hot clench of pain and fear in his stomach. He ran through the clouded space as fast as he could, hoping against hope that he was not too late. Finally, he blasted away some of the mist and saw Harry.

He was wearing the same clothes as when Sirius last saw him, despite the fact that Sirius couldn’t quite grasp when exactly he  _ had  _ last seen him; black school robes, beat-up trainers on his feet. But there, the similarities ended. 

Harry sat—no, was  _ tied to, _ a straight-backed wooden chair. There were rough cords drawn tightly across his torso and around his wrists and ankles, no doubt secured by magic. There were tears in those black robes, and Sirius thought there was blood soaking the fabric in places. Harry’s face was mottled with bruises in various colors, indicating he had been being hurt for some time. His head was slumped forward, but his chest rose and fell shallowly. His glasses had fallen into his lap, and Sirius saw a crack running through one lens. 

Perhaps most gut-wrenchingly, someone had shaved Harry’s head, ridding him of the wild, tousled hair that made him look so like James, and even Fleamont. It made the lightning-bolt scar stand out starkly against his skin—paler than usual, like James’s red-brown stag in the colorless light of the full moon; how had Sirius never seen that?—as if it was mirroring his broken glasses. Sirius recalled the story Harry told of his spontaneous magic as a child, where that twat Petunia had shaved his head and his hair had grown back the following day. This was deliberate—this was someone who found Harry’s weaknesses and used them.

Sirius dropped to his knees, reaching for the cords that bound him. “Harry. Harry?” Harry moaned softly but did nothing else. Sirius tried untying the ropes with his hands and with magic, but they did not budge.  _ Wish I had my knife, _ he thought, and when he touched his hip pocket, there it was. He thumbed it open and cut through the ropes carefully, starting on Harry’s wrists and ankles so that the ropes on his torso would keep him upright. 

_ Who did this? _ he thought.  _ Why are there Dementors here? Where are the rest of the Order? _ He considered sending a Patronus to James and Lily as he lowered the semi-conscious Harry to the floor, and there was a whisper of something foreboding in the back of his mind that came with that thought, but Sirius was distracted as Harry stirred on the stone floor.

“Harry, are you alright? Can you hear me?”

Harry’s eyes grew wide as he recognized his godfather, and Sirius was momentarily grateful—and then Harry tried weakly to scramble away from him, a hoarse, broken cry rasping and squeaking in his throat.

“Harry—” 

_ “NO! No more! _ Sirius, please, p-please, n-no more, I’ll be good, please, I promise, I promise—”

Never had Sirius seen Harry so emotionally broken. Not when the Diggory boy died and Voldemort returned, not when Umbridge forced him to carve words into his own hand, not even when he had gotten whatever vision he’d seen that summoned him to the Department of Mysteries. He was always so determined, almost stoic in his conviction and anger. 

Sirius went to stand from where he knelt on the ground, hoping to give Harry some space, but as he glanced down to get his bearings, he saw a smear of blood beneath him. Had he been injured? But no, the blood was on his hands… his forearms… on the blade of his knife…

Memories, perhaps the first since finding himself here, flooded him. 

_ He was tying Harry to the chair despite his protests. “Don’t worry!” he said, somewhere between sarcastic and joyful. He heard the vague unhinged cadence of Bellatrix in his voice. “This is at least better than the Dementors, right? Ah, ah, none of that struggling, Harry!  _ Crucio! _ ” Harry screamed and strained against his bindings—  _

_ Sirius’s knife was cutting easily and slowly through school robes, a t-shirt, until it made a satisfying slice in Harry’s abdomen and he screamed. Then there was a healing spell, and another incision in the same place, laughter that sounded like Orion but that Sirius thought belonged to him—  _

_ His fist in Harry’s hair, pulling upwards as Harry struggled. “You look so much like your father,” Sirius heard himself sneer. “That awful mop that always smells like fucking curry somehow, as if the blood-traitor ever did anything more than celebrate Diwali late when Fleamont reminded him and throw color-bombs at people for Holi; the man couldn’t name five of his stupid Muggle deities if he tried—” and the straight-razor of Sirius’s knife was sawing through coarse, black hair and letting it fall to the floor—  _

_ His fist on Harry’s face—  _

_ His teeth near Harry’s mouth—was he  _ kissing _ him? Dear God, that was his  _ tongue  _ between Sirius’s teeth, and the taste of blood— _

Sirius was wrenched violently from the images by a dry heave. He put his hands on his knees and retched once, twice, a dozen times. As he was wiping spit from his mouth, he heard the  _ whoosh _ of a wand being drawn sharply through the air, and in his panic he turned and raised his own. He saw a pale, bald face coming towards him, mouth stretched into a grim smile, and he acted as quickly as he could— 

_ “Avada Kedavra!” _

But when the body fell, it was too small, and not nearly pale enough— 

Harry lay sprawled on the cold stone, eyes as green as the curse that killed him staring wide and accusatory.

Sirius ran. He ran into the mist, and when he tried to be Padfoot and failed, he stumbled to his knees. There, he cried and screamed until he thought he had ruptured something in his throat. He lay in a tight ball, forehead pressed to the ground, unsure where he was, until he eventually could not remember what he was there for. His throat hurt, his knees were bruised and cold, and there was the taste of salt in his mouth. He stood, bewildered, and saw nothing but dark mist around him.

“Hello?” he cried. “Anybody?”

His voice was swallowed by the fog around him, a dull and greasy grey. He found his wand, lit it, and found it barely helped. He walked slowly, listlessly through the mist, waiting to find something. He called out sometimes, and found no response, so eventually he stopped. He walked because there was nothing else to do. When he was tired, which he sometimes was, he stopped. Possibly, he slept, but he did not dream and there was nothing to differentiate one time-frame from another. 

Finally, he heard a voice. 

“Sirius?”

He glanced around, confused, and then realized that was him. He was Sirius Black. Someone was calling to him. “Hello?” he replied warily.

“Oh thank god, Sirius,” the voice said, and the clouded air cleared to his right. A thin, tired, but relieved-looking teenager came through waving his wand until they stood in a small clearing with no fog. 

“R… Remus?”

“Yes?”

“You’re Remus?”

“Last I checked,” Remus agreed, sounding slightly impatient. “Let’s go, we’re late.” He began striding forward briskly, clearing the pathway ahead of them with his wand. Sirius followed, brow furrowed and feet occasionally stumbling. 

“Late… for what?” Sirius asked.

“For my execution, of course,” Remus said matter-of-factly. “Don’t you remember?” And suddenly Sirius did.

_ Remus being dragged from the Shrieking Shack mostly naked by Magical Law Enforcement and the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Albus Dumbledore standing silently in silver robes as Sirius watched through dog eyes. After some time, a puffy-eyed Madame Pomfery emerging also, levitating a covered stretcher from which a Slytherin scarf and a lock of lank, black hair fell loose over the edge—  _

_ A large, cold room where Remus was chained to an overlarge and unforgiving chair. Sirius, sitting in the nosebleeds, behind a shield charm that acted as a barrier and silenced his voice to the other side, straining to hear the Wizengamot: “And so I will ask you a final time, Mister Lupin. Did you, in the form of a Dark creature known as a lycanthrope or werewolf, attack and kill Severus Tobias Snape on that day at Hogwarts School?” _

_ “I don’t know.” Remus said quietly. _

_ “You don’t  _ know?”

_ “Lycanthropes often do not retain memories of events that happen while they are transformed,” Dumbledore supplied neutrally. “As we have discussed at length over the past several days.” _

_ “And yet!” one of the old wizards cried. “Some of you would have us believe that this thing—” He gestured to Remus. “—is human!” Mutters around the room, many sounding as if they agreed. “Pray tell, if he is a human, why does he not remember his actions? Conversely, if he does not remember his actions, then he is not the beast; but the beast lives in him, and it is a threat. We feel no remorse when we must put down a dangerous dragon, or an illegal chimaera. Why would we now? It is unfortunate, surely, but necessary. We cannot allow a wolf who has tasted human blood—Wizard blood, at that—continue to hunt. Its wrath and hunger will only be greater for having killed before! It must be disposed of, and if the only way to eradicate the wolf is to kill the half-breed it lives in, I say  _ do it!”

_ Roars from around the room this time, some witches and wizards jumping to their feet in agreement. The officials called for order, and the Wizengamot spoke among themselves and retired to their chambers to discuss for a whole ten minutes. When they filed back out in a single line, Sirius saw it on their faces. He wanted to leap to his feet but James was pressing on his shoulders with both hands—  _

_ They killed him there, without ceremony. Unlike most people, who would have suffered the Dementor’s Kiss and lived on as empty bodies, Remus’s body was the culprit. And so they summoned an executioner, drawn at random from the Aurors and dressed head to toe in black, a hood covering his face. He performed the spell without words, but the green light was unmistakable. It was all over in twelve minutes. _

_ They carried his body out as Sirius howled from the auditorium seats. He needed both James and Peter to hold him back. _

_ “This is not how it happened!” he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. “This is not how it happened! This is—  _

—not how it happened!”

He was standing in the mist again. Where was Remus? Wasn’t he supposed to find Remus? To tell him… something. That he was dead? But he wasn’t. That Lily and James were dead? No. That Peter was responsible? No, no, he knew this. That Harry was hurt? Something. Something important.  _ Find Moony. Find him and get out. _

Sirius set off through the mist again.  _ Find Moony, get out. Find Moony, get out. _

There was no sense of time. Sirius could not remember how he had come into this place or if he’d ever really been anywhere else. His distress faded until there was none left, but he retained his sense of urgency and the litany in his head like a prayer.  _ Find Moony, get out. _ Sometimes he felt the icy cold of Dementors in the fog, and he cast the best Patronus he could muster, but it was always incorporeal and brief. It seemed to do the job, however, and so he kept on. There were Foe-Glass figures who whispered and muttered, but he cast Silencing Charms on them and tried his best not to look in their direction. He heard his footsteps plod dully on the ground and the steady, shallow sounds of his breath. 

Then there was something else, a crackling sound that seemed familiar somehow and made Sirius feel like  _ home  _ and  _ warm _ and  _ good _ and he couldn’t remember why. He tried to follow the sound, and as he did, he realized it was music. A vinyl record under a needle. As he got closer, he could hear some of the words.

_ “...Who searches for the moonbeam _

_ Who was last seen _

_ Looking at the tracks _

_ Of the careless wind beam _

_ Or moving to the clacks _

_ Of the tireless freight train…” _

Sirius broke through the fog into another clearing and saw Remus, not as a teenager but as a tired and confident adult. Sirius realized the clearing was not a clearing at all, but Remus’s borrowed bedroom at Grimmauld Place. It was cluttered with old Black family furniture and their scattered belongings—quills and robes, socks and books, wand polish and articles clipped from the  _ Prophet _ —mingling together, a kind of umbilical collection of miscellania that marked them as a pair almost as much as the history they shared, those moments that sometimes felt like shackles.

Remus looked up the album cover that belonged to the record playing on Sirius’s record player. “Padfoot!” he exclaimed, smiling warmly. He did that surprisingly nimble unfolding thing with his long legs and stood up. “You found me!”

_ Find Moony—  _

“Moony, we have to—”

— _ get out. _

“What wrong, Sirius?” That small frown that settled between his brows before it found its way to his mouth. Sirius’s chest felt tight with emotion, but he reminded himself there was no time.

“We have to get out of here,” Sirius insisted.

Remus looked confused but did not argue. “What for?”

“I… I don’t remember.” There was a helplessness settling over Sirius’s shoulders that he was unsure he’d ever felt before. 

“What do you remember?” Remus asked, suddenly all business under his concern. Sirius wasn’t certain, but he thought perhaps Remus’s wand was pointed at him from Remus’s pocket. 

“I… My name is… Sirius Black, and I know—I know you. I, uh…” The weight of that helplessness increased. Sirius felt suddenly like an old man. The information was there, unlike cases of being Confunded or confused, or even knocked unconscious. It was there, he just wasn’t able to reach it. The record continued to play in the background, and, like a drowning man reaching for debris, Sirius’s mind seized on it.

“The record. I always used to make fun of the name,  _ Nilsson Schmilsson, _ I said the man would have made a fine wizard. You were offended at first, thought I was saying that his music would only be good if he wasn’t a Muggle. Didn’t talk to me for a few days.”

Some tension seemed to leave Remus. “Have you lost time?” he asked, all worry and frayed nerves and jumper threads as he shone dim wandlight into Sirius’s eyes.

“I… yeah, I s’pose I have.”

“Why do we need to leave, Pads, do you remember?”

“Dumbledore, he… he’s a Dementor, Remus, I don’t—and Harry, I hurt—Harry is hurt, I have to owl Lily and James, to tell them—”

“Sirius!” Remus said, and something in his tone made the words die in Sirius’s mouth. “Lily and James are dead, Sirius.”

And like the others, this memory was not there until it was, but unlike the others, it was vivid and coppery on his tongue like blood. This one was real. It was his.

* * *

 

The air around the motorbike was so cold, there was frost on the scarf Sirius had pulled over his mouth, but he barely felt it. All he could think about was Frank Longbottom’s Patronus saying they’d been called to Godric’s Hollow. Naturally, everyone thought he was Secret Keeper, and when the Potters’ defensive spells were triggered, the first thought was to check on Sirius, to be sure he wasn’t being tortured. When Frank’s terrier burst through the wall of the motel Sirius had been holed up in, afraid to go home, afraid to confront Remus, it asked only for a codeword.

“Moonbeam,” Sirius told it. It meant, _ I am safe. I am myself. I am not being tortured. _ The dog gave a yip, and Sirius summoned his own Patronus beside it. The silver hound, twice the size or more of Frank’s, looked up at him intently. “Tell him I’m meeting them there,” he growled, and he was grabbing his leather jacket and his worn Gryffindor scarf from the top of the dresser where he’d left them before the two silver dogs had even left the room.

Now, a hundred feet up, there was a chill in his heart that his jacket and its warming charms couldn’t touch.

He knew before he left his temporary home that something was wrong. He knew the Potters were in Godric’s Hollow, but since James, Lily, and Peter had done the Fidelius Charm, he had forgotten exactly where, and even Godric’s Hollow wasn’t something he was always able to bring to mind. It seemed his fear and adrenaline sometimes helped keep it in the forefront of his thoughts. But now he was able to remember the street they lived on; that their roof was an interesting shade of dark blue; that Lily had planted petunias in the window boxes the previous summer.

As he landed, he didn’t have room to think, only to see: see the smoldering ruins where there was once that dark blue roof; see the ginger cat hissing and fleeing through the trees; see Harry’s crib through the hole in the ceiling. Sirius landed and didn’t bother to prop his bike upright. He let it slam to the pavement without even looking, and he barged through the front door, wand raised.

James was sprawled on the floor in the hall and baby Harry was crying, a loud, keening cry that Sirius had never heard from him. Two thoughts occurred to him, then. One:  _ My life is over; without James, I am nothing. I am dead.  _ And the second:  _ I killed them. I killed them but I will make sure Peter dies with us.  _ There was a fledgling third thought about Harry, about godfatherhood, but it was overwhelmed. He heard an Apparition in the distance. The Order. They would keep Harry safer than Sirius could. 

But then all that was blotted out by the thought of Peter Pettigrew, his round smiling face, his squinted laughing eyes.

He got back on his bike, thinking of Hagrid, who was stationed nearby and had always loved the damn deathtrap.  _ Hagrid will take it, _ he thought.  _ And Harry.  _

He was in the air again, and this time he wasn’t aware of the chill, only the hot boiling rage in his stomach and the sound of the pulse in his ears. That, and the image of Peter Pettigrew’s damned, lying, murdering face.

* * *

 

“Lily and James are dead, Sirius,” Remus was saying, his voice tight, as the Harry Nilsson record played in the background.

“And so am I,” Sirius croaked. There was a wan smile on Remus’s face. “You’re not real, either,” Sirius said, understanding dawning. “Because you’re alive. None of this is real.”

“Always get there eventually, don’t you, Padfoot?” Remus’s voice was kind, and his hands on Sirius’s shoulders were gentle. He kissed Sirius as if he did it all the time; like they had done as teenagers before the war started cutting their softness into sharp and cautious edges. Sirius kissed him back like he was stumbling through a prayer—slowly, but with familiarity and a sense of things that were holy. When Remus pulled away, Sirius felt something in his chest pull away also.

“Now, Sirus, are you ready to get out of here?”

_ No. No, I want to stay here, with you, please—  _ Sirius nodded anyway. He wanted nothing more than to be with Moony, but he knew his brain could never create a Remus Lupin as good as the real thing. He leaned in, tried to kiss his friend, but Remus was no longer there.

Suddenly there was pressure under his armpits, and he was flooded with a sense of panic. He kicked his feet and struggled, trying to gain purchase, and then he was being pulled up and back, and he could not properly breathe. He found himself horizontal and rolled to his side, coughing. He felt something not quite water and not quite air dripping from his mouth and pooling in front of his face.

“—were you  _ fucking _ thinking, you absolute  _ nutter,  _ I bloody told you not to—”

“James,” said Sirius, recognizing his voice. “I knew... I always knew we’d die together.”

Then he passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The excerpt from _Fight Club_ is Chuck Palahniuk’s and not remotely mine. Also, Sirius fell through the Veil in May 1996 and the book wasn’t officially published until August, but I figure it existed technically before it was published, so we’re gonna go with “the afterlife is omniscient and doesn’t rely on publishers to read books” and leave it at that.
> 
> The song Remus is playing in the Pensieve is “The Moonbeam Song” by Harry Nilsson.
> 
> The wizard romance novel Sirius reads is a reference to croatoanmary’s [_Here Comes Another One_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8391568/chapters/19224772), which is a lovely Wolfstar modern text message AU that I am in love with. I simplified and butchered it greatly for its novel counterpart; forgive me, Mary.


	5. all the world's inside your head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James wants Sirius to grow up, but Sirius wants James to realize prison wasn't exactly finishing school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter originally was very different and then I realized there was no way James and Sirius were not going to end up yelling at each other. Sorry. 
> 
> More inanimate purgatory objects die at Sirius’s hands. Also, discussion of prison, doubts of & wavering of sanity, and more false memories of violence.

_ See the animal in his cage that you built _

_ Are you sure what side you're on? _

_ Better not look him too closely in the eye _

_ Are you sure what side of the glass you are on? _

_ See the safety of the life you have built _

_ Everything where it belongs _

_ Feel the hollowness inside of your heart _

_ And it's all right where it belongs _

**_— Nine Inch Nails, “[Right Where It Belongs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jAyfGzSaz0)”_ **

  
  


* * *

 

 

At first, Sirius was convinced he was at Grimmauld Place and it was Harry standing over him, scowling, but the fact that he didn’t think Harry has ever scowled at him made this confusing, until he sat up and realized slowly that it was James at his bedside instead.

He wondered if it was ever going to be easier to remember that he was dead.

“What the  _ fuck, _ Sirius?” James asked. His voice was low and gravelly, and the lack of volume actually made Sirius gape. The only time he remembered James’s anger being directed at him like this was after that cock-up with Severus Snape back in school, when James only spoke to him so Remus didn’t have to.

“Er, sorry,” Sirius said hesitantly. “But I’m not sure what you mean?”

“Oh really? You don’t remember jumping into an empty Pensieve  _ after I specifically told you not to? _ ”

“You sound like Lily,” Sirius said, meaning for it to be lighthearted, but instead it came out annoyed.

“No, Sirius, I sound like  _ me, _ but  _ angry, _ which, luckily for you, you’ve rarely heard!”

_ Fair enough, _ Sirius thought. He ran his hands through his hair and glanced around the room, trying to remember what had happened, and when he saw Honeydukes boxes on the floor and his leaning tower of books, it dawned on him slowly—his trip into the Pensieve, the false memories, the days (or was it weeks? Months?) wandering the nothingness. When he looked back at James, James’s face was more sympathetic, and Sirius felt himself trembling.

“If you hadn’t pulled me out, I’d still be in there.”

“Probably,” James said.

“What—where was I?”

“Well,” James sighed, leaving Sirius’s bed and walking aimlessly about the room. “The Pensieve is a medium for memories. Like… I don’t know, you remember Lily painted, right?”

“Of course, Remus and I had that lakeside piece hung up until—until you died.”

James waved a hand as if neither the painting nor his death was that important, which, Sirius supposed, after over a decade, it really wasn’t. “The Pensieve is like an acrylic medium—colorless until you add the pigment dust. The memories. But if you painted something with acrylic medium and then just threw pigment at it, it would be all muddled up, right? And maybe you threw blue and red at it, and not purple, but you’d get purple in it anyway, because that’s what the components made. Are you following?”

Decade and death between them there might be, but he and James were still brothers, and understood each other well. There had been a time in their youth they’d rarely even had to use complete sentences to make themselves understood. “You’re saying what the Pensieve gave me was a mix of whatever was in my head,” Sirius said. “Even if it wasn’t exactly a memory. It was stuff my memories kind of mashed together for me. Like… a nightmare. But more.”

“Right! Yes, that. Good on you, Padfoot, I knew you’d get it.”

Sirius barely heard him. He was thinking of the scene of Remus in the courtroom, being sentenced to death, and he shivered, his fists clutching convulsively at the bedsheets. Versions of that same scene had played incessantly in his head after he’d told Severus Snape, in a fit of rage and stupidity, how to get past the Willow. The scene with Harry was more troubling, but had there not been thirteen years of guilt and regret brewing in him over his abandoned godson? He supposed he equated Harry’s upbringing with the Muggles to torture, much as his own had been, and his remorse had magnified it to new heights.

He ran his hand through his hair again, a habit which he’d definitely picked up from James eons ago. Annoyingly, James seemed to be free of the rebellious, anti-Sleekeazy habit in this life. ( _ Death? _ Sirius’s mind supplied unhelpfully.  _ Afterlife? Purgatory? Demented Veil fantasy that isn’t any more real than your visions from insanity in Azkaban?) _

The moment of joy at Sirius’s quick understanding was falling from James’s face now, and that unusual anger was taking its place. “Dammit, Sirius, does everything have to be breaking rules and defiance for you? I thought prison would have helped you grow up!”

Sirius flinched, and nothing provoked his Black family viciousness like being made to flinch. Especially about Azkaban. And, it seemed, extra especially by the man he’d ostensibly gone to Azkaban  _ for. _ “Oh, really?” His voice was a sneer, and he felt his lips pull back into a doglike snarl. “You thought a decade being eaten away at by the physical manifestations of suicidal depression, broken only by hiding in the body of a malnourished dog, would help me  _ grow up?” _

“Isn’t that the point? To sit and think about how you’ve fucked up?”

“The  _ point? _ ” Sirius roared, jumping to his feet from the edge of his bed, wanting to put distance between himself and James, who had never felt more like a stranger. “Thirteen years sleeping on a stone floor, James! Not knowing if it was night or day because of Dementors, who are so close to you all the time that you go mad, bit by bit, until you can’t even remember who you are!” His voice cracked on this last, and somewhere behind his rage he recognized that he had never spoken of Azkaban like this, not even to Remus. “When I got out, I knew Peter had to be found, but I didn’t even know exactly why, Prongs! I’d muddled it all up—you, Lily, Harry, the Order! Do you have any idea what it feels like to have nothing but rage to define yourself? It took me five days to remember my fucking  _ name!  _

“You think they designed Azkaban to have a  _ point? _ Of course you do, you’re James fucking Potter, you’re still living in the world where after the war you’ll be a Quidditch star! Where you and Lily will have a gaggle of Evans-Potters to send off to Hogwarts with your map and cloak to cause mischief! You sit up here with your sodding archways and your Pensieve and you act like you  _ know _ because you  _ saw! _ Well, I don’t know what the fuck you  _ saw _ while you were up here, Prongs, but it will  _ never _ be like living it!”

“You’re not living it anymore, Sirius!” James, rather than matching the fever pitch of Sirius’s rage, sounded like a teacher admonishing a particularly stubborn pupil. “That’s the entire point.”

“ _I would rather be!”_ The heat in his face felt like it might be singeing his eyebrows and flecks of spittle flew from his lips. _Black family trait or Azkabani dementia?_ he wondered, somewhere in a far off part of his brain.  “I would rather go back to Azkaban and serve time all over again than be up here doing _nothing!_ ” He turned away from James, who was still standing near the bed. He grabbed the first thing he saw—a paperweight that he thought came from his memory of Fleamont’s desk. He threw it across the room, away from James. It hit the wall and shattered. James followed its arc with his eyes but didn’t move. “Why am I up here? To read _Frankenstein?_ To have you lecture me like McGonagall? To be at the mercy of my own fucked-up brain? I could have done that _alive!_ _Alive,_ damn you, with Harry and Remus!” This time it was a small terra-cotta pot that held Lily’s favorite Christmas cactus, grown from a larger one her mother kept for years. This inane trivia swirled in his head like a buzzing insect, annoying and impossible to get rid of. Dirt flew from the plant, pottery splintered with a satisfying sound, and the cactus sat lopsided in a pile of residual potting soil against a bookshelf. There was a stab of guilt, even though he knew it wasn’t Lily’s plant; that Lily could conjure up as many Christmas cactuses as she damn well liked somewhere else in this place which gave you everything you never really wanted. Looking around, he found nothing else of throwable size to grab, and so he shoved the mattress off of the bed instead. It was less than satisfying. He longed for his wand and a few well-placed eruption charms. Instead, he settled for turning back towards James and backing James up towards a wall. 

‘“Look at you, James Potter all  _ wise  _ and  _ grown up _ and throwing fucking judgement at your asshole, delinquent brother. ‘Grow up, Sirius! Calm down, Sirius! Be  _ normal _ , Sirius!’ Well  _ fuck you,  _ James, because that’s not how my life worked so why the  _ fuck _ should it be how my death works, huh?” He shoved at James’s chest. James’s face remained impassive, but Sirius could see a spark of something in his eyes, and that something looked like pity. Sirius’s stomach lit itself on fire at that. He could bear almost anything from almost anyone, but not pity. Never pity. Never from James.

“ _ You! _ ” he accused, jabbing a finger hard into James’s sternum. “ _ You _ grew up in a normal family with everything you ever needed! ‘Here, James, take this broom, James! Let’s buy you new dress robes, James! Of course we’ll go on holiday in America, James, if that’s what you want!’ Your folks never sent  _ you _ Howlers! They never made  _ you _ kneel at their feet before you spoke to them. Merlin, I don’t think you ever even got grounded, let alone locked in the cellar for four days! And when you and Lily got together, the whole school swooned over you, Mr. and Mrs. Head Student.”

“Sirius,” James began. “That has nothing to do with—”

“Oh  _ yes it does, _ James!” Sirius roared. He left his anger in his head like a living thing, a Cornish pixie wreaking havoc between his ears and carving profanities inside his skull for kicks. “It has  _ everything _ to do with what you’re fucking doing right now. You lived a star and you died a goddamn  _ hero! _ Everyone in the Wizarding world knows who  _ you _ are! They had parades for you, parties, monuments, statues! May I remind you that I, your best friend, your goddamn  _ brother, _ went to murder our best mate for you? And your son, oh! Your  _ son  _ might be the most well-known person to have ever done magic! He’s got the entire Order at his back, and Albus Dumbledore guiding him personally through all of this!”

“Don’t you bring Harry into this!” James snarled, hand reflexively reaching for a wand that wasn’t there. Even though there was a small tug of guilt in his chest for using Harry as a bargaining chip, Sirius felt a wicked smile on his face.  _ Finally threw you off your game, didn’t I, Jamie? _

“Fine, let’s not. Let’s not talk about the fact that Harry grew up with Lily’s Wizard-hating sister because it was easier to throw a  _ Black  _ in prison than listen to a word he has to say! They’re all fucking Death Eaters and pureblood inbreds anyway, aren’t they? Let’s ignore how Dumbledore let Harry be tortured by his family his entire childhood rather than leave him with a  _ werewolf shirt-lifter!” _ Sirius began pacing again at this, roiling energy threatening to jump from him like electricity from winter wool. “You think me and Remus being what we are had nothing to do with it? Because if you do, you’re stupider than Severus Snape’s big toe!”

“Sirius, I—”

“ _ No! _ No, you don’t get to sit there and try and act  _ reasonable _ about this, James! All the time, you were  _ reasonable _ about it! ‘Who cares about your furry little problem, Remus, there’s a bloke out there with a name like a bad Muggle magician! Who cares who your mum was, Sirius, you’re a Gryffindor now! Who cares who you’re shagging, there’s a war on!’ Well  _ other people care, _ James, and other people  _ always cared! _ You and Lily got married, you had Harry, people gave you anniversary gifts and took pictures of you when you kissed!

“Remus’s mum died without ever knowing we were dating, remember that? How I couldn’t sit with him at Hope’s funeral because her family would have found it  _ unseemly? _ Do you remember how many times Remus and I got accosted in London? When Remus came home with a black eye? Do you realize that Remus spent over a decade mostly homeless because he couldn’t get to my money? Because he couldn’t  _ marry  _ me, werewolf or no werewolf! It was illegal for us to even  _ be together _ in Muggle Scotland when we were at school! And now you stand here in this perfect world with these perfect rooms and somewhere your perfect wife is watching her perfect son be the Chosen One! And what do we get? What do Remus and I get?  _ Nothing! _ ”

Sirius swung his fist at the wall next to James, remembering half-swing that he wouldn’t hurt at all but unwilling to stop. His fist thunked against the stone with nary a scrape or mark, but there was still some awful, squirming pleasure watching James flinch.  _ See how you like it, _ Sirius thought.

“I died a fugitive, and Remus has nothing left of me, and you want to stand here and tell me any of this was supposed to help me grow up?  _ You _ need to grow up, James! You need to realize that the world moved on without you and some of us didn’t get to watch our lives on a screen with their soulmate sitting next to them!”

The image was bright in his mind then, James and Lily sitting together in some strange, other-wordly cinema, watching him in Azkaban as they shared a box of Bertie Bott’s. Sirius then saw Remus next to him on that small couch in Sirius’s first fat, watching old movies with beers in hand and laughing so loudly they couldn’t hear the dialogue. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to be there, eighteen and full of hope, a whole life spread out ahead of them.

“Leave me alone, James,” Sirius said, the volume dropping from his voice like dust from a disturbed shrine. He gave James’s shoulders one last shove before he sat heavily on his bed and kept his eyes pointed deliberately to the floor. “Just get out.”

There was a long pause and a heavy sigh, and then James’s footsteps crossing the room and the sound of a closing the door.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Sirius found that the afterlife had some convenience, such as not having to eat, or even shift position in bed. He lay in the phantom-memory of his dormitory four-poster and… well, sometimes there was no  _ and. _ He would come back to himself and wonder how long he had been there, drifting off into that safe-room in his mind where there was nothing but a litany of grim truths before they faded into a blank static.  _ I am dead, nothing can hurt me, I am dead, I am innocent, I am dead, nothing can hurt me. _ Sometimes he was Padfoot, and he wondered if that, too, was a gift Azkaban had given him—the ability to shift for self-preservation without conscious thought.

But none of those wonders stayed long. They fled before the blankness, or were buried under memories that came and went at their own free will—the day James asked him to be Harry’s godfather; the night he proposed to Remus when they were nineteen even though they couldn’t be married and he knew Remus would say no and he  _ did  _ say no because their relationship was as unstable as a Sneakoscope in a room with Snape; the few times he spent alone with Lily, watching her laugh and understanding suddenly why James had fallen so irrevocably in love with her. There were even memories of Peter there—laughing so hard at the breakfast table that juice came out his nose; the handmade scrapbooks he had made them all for Christmas fourth year; the way he always had that camera in his hand, as if he thought capturing the Marauders on film would keep them from leaving him behind. But look where that got him—where it got them all.

Even those thoughts eventually sank, paper boats saturated by the waters of despair. He realized at some point that this was what it had been like—what it  _ was _ like—for Remus when the depression was bad, and that made his chest ache again, so he pulled the blankets over his head and curled up until he felt his nose touching his tail.

_ I am dead, nothing can hurt me. I am innocent. _

_ Nothing can hurt me. _

  
  


* * *

 

 

“...you want, Sirius?”

He didn’t recognize the noise as speech at first, another Azkabani side-effect. You spent so long listening to silence that noise was a foreign object. Then there was a hand on his canine flank, and he came back to his human body in a panic, flailing away from the touch.  _ Dementor, Death Eater, Mother— _ his mind chattered. “ _ Get away from me!” _ he cried hoarsely.

“Oi—sorry. Padfoot, Pads, it’s me, hey!”

Sirius looked around wildly for the attacker, his hair flying in front of his face, his right hand grasping the bedclothes, hoping for the wand he slept with under his pillow but coming up empty. Then he saw tousled dark hair and a pair of round glasses and realized it had been James who had spoken.

He had no breath to catch, this being the afterlife and all, but Sirius still felt whatever acted as adrenaline in the ethereal pumping through him as he forced himself to sit back down.

“Sorry,” James said, looking actually abashed for the first time since Sirius had come through the Veil. He had stepped back from the bed and was holding his hands out, palms towards Sirius, as if calming a mad dog.  _ Which, _ Sirius thought,  _ I suppose I am. _

“S’okay,” Sirius muttered, taking an unnecessary but deep breath. Neither of them said anything for a moment, and then Sirius stood and gave himself a once-over, passing his hands over his chest and making sure he was all in one piece. Without thinking much about it, he glanced down and saw that he was shirtless. His Runic tattoos stretched grim and dark across his skin, a sight he had become so accustomed to after prison that at first, he wasn’t sure why James was giving him such an odd look.

“Oh,” he realized. “You never saw these.”

“Not up close,” James said quietly. His hand reached toward Sirius for a moment, to poke and prod as they had done in their school days, and then pulled his hand back.

“Stop acting like a schoolgirl, James,” Sirius said a bit too roughly. “They’re just tattoos.” Although that wasn’t quite right. His first tattoos, all in honor of his friends, those were  _ just _ tattoos. The runes on his chest and arms were a testament, a continuous witness to  _ madness  _ and  _ punishment _ and  _ damned. _

_ _

“How did you do it?” James asked, eyes lingering over the n _ yd _ on Sirius’s left shoulder. “I mean, it’s not as if you had a cellmate and a needle…”

James’s question confused Sirius at first. Hadn’t he seen it, from the omniscient cinema in the sky? But Harry had been older by the time Sirius had started changing them around, and James had probably preferred to watch his only son grow up than stare at his best friend writhe on a prison floor, desperate for magic.

“Well, you know what Azkaban is like, don’t you? A bit?”

“Of course,” said James, and his voice was also rough around the edges. “I watched you, Padfoot, I promise, I—it’s not as if I didn’t understand what you’d done. But I didn’t stick around. It… it hurt too much,” he admitted, taking his hand away from the symbols on Sirius’s chest and roughly wiping at his eyes behind his glasses.

Sirius let this sit a moment and simply glanced down at his chest again, as if he was expecting the symbols to change. They sat motionless and stark against bare skin. 

“What they don’t tell you about Azkaban,” Sirius began slowly after a moment. “Is that the whole place is made to drive you mad. Not just the Dementors, though they help, but the whole damn thing. The sound of the sea, the way the air is always wet and a little cold, the echoes on the stone, the way other people's’ voices sound in the dark.” He trembled, but didn’t seem to notice. “And the isolation, that’s really the crux of it. You’re thousands of kilometers away from all humans except the vile, evil cockroaches worthy of being thrown into a place like Azkaban.” He laughed shortly, dry and humorless. “Well, and people like me, I suppose, who are so good at failing to be righteous that they cross the same line somehow. 

“The Dementors, everyone knows what they do in the short term. Chills, sadness, hopelessness, even flashbacks sometimes. Some people can even accurately picture the despair they cause, I suppose. But only Azkabanis know what they do in large numbers like that, always there, right in the air you’re breathing. You start to forget who you are, why you’re there, what your body even looks like even when it’s right in front of you. Being Padfoot helped a little, but there’s not a lot of room for complex thought in a dog brain, and can you believe the white sheep of the Black family actually wished for intellectual stimulation sometimes?”

There was another short, humorless laugh, and Sirius’s lips stretched over his teeth in a grimace that might’ve been meant as a smile. He didn’t look at James, but rather at the wall over his shoulder, his grey eyes distant. “After a while, you think you’re getting used to it. The Dementors. You think maybe you’ve acclimated, maybe you can stand up in your cell for half an hour and, I dunno, do fucking pushups or some such thing. But then you try, and your entire body is in agony. From the cold, from lying there for days, from subsisting on the bare minimum of food for days and weeks. And you think that’s alright, because you could have expected it, and you’ll get used to that to.”

Sirius fell silent, and James said nothing for over a minute, waiting. When it seemed like Sirius had perhaps gotten lost in thought, James opened his mouth to speak, but Sirius interrupted.

“What you’re not ready for is the missing magic.”

“Missing—?”

“Missing, suppressed, drained, whatever you call it,” Sirius said, waving a hand at James. He got up from the bed and began to pace again. “As a wizard you never notice how much magic is around you. Especially us, as purebloods, you know? It’s like the smell of another person’s house. You notice it at first, but they certainly don’t, and the more you’re there and the more you’re around them, the less you take note of the smell of cocoa or jasmine or what have you.” He glanced at James, who was nodding. “In Azkaban, it’s as if someone dumped baking soda across all that smell. Anything that could have a scent of magic, anything that might  _ remind _ you of the way magic feels, all just covered up. I don’t know if they meant to do it, whoever was in charge of starting the damn place—”

“Rowle. Damocles Rowle,” James muttered automatically.

“—but there’s no better way to wipe out magic in the air than to make a witch or wizard want to die more than anything else. For us, to live is to use magic. That’s why involuntary magic is so common as children, you know, and why Obscurials are so rare and so damaging. It passes through us like air or water, and we don’t even know it’s happening. I read a lot about this, you know,” he said abruptly, looking directly at James for the first time.

“Did you?”

Sirius nodded. “When I escaped—when I got out, you know, I was a right mess. After finding Pettigrew at Hogwarts, when I went on the run, I had nothing but time. Time to think, time to remember, and time to realize how damaged a really was.” Sirius heaved another deep breath, as if to steady himself. “I had no wand, for a while, so all I could do was think, but once Dumbledore convinced Ollivander to give me a new one—under a Disillusionment  _ and _ Polyjuice, mind you! Though I don’t think it fooled Ollivander any—I was able to go into Wizarding spaces again. And can you believe the first place I went was a library?” He scoffed his own disbelief at this, shaking his head, but there was a small, mournful smile on James’s face.

“Anyway. Enough of that. The point is, while I was in Azkaban, it was the absence of magic that drove me insane as much as everything else. You have no wand, no magical artifacts except the building itself, and anything that it has in it has been polluted by Dementors for decades. It’s not energy you’d want to use. So I went for the closest source of external magic I had. Once you’re that desperate, you feel all of it. Probably like a man dying of thirst in a desert—if there was a drop of water, you could feel it. “

“So you used it,” James said. “The magic in your tattoos.” There was curiosity and something Sirius thought might be admiration in his voice, and Sirius thought he sounded more himself than he’d been since Sirius arrived.

“As much as I could,” Sirius agreed. “Which wasn’t much at first. I’d just lay there and feel for them, to try and find their signature in my head, you know? Then I could feel the moon phasing along with the lunar cycle. Not like a muscle, more like… like finding an item in a dark bag. My mind bumped against it and it learned to read the phases that way. Then I could open and close the lilies, or twitch Peter’s nose.”

Sirius’s eyes were distant again, and he had forgotten he was speaking aloud. “The moon was the hardest part. Feeling it get full even when I couldn’t see it, knowing that Remus was out there and not being able to do anything. I think that’s what made me do it, eventually. I was aware enough to know it was a full moon, and I was just moving the lines on your antlers about on purpose when I realized I had that cowardly, lying,  _ murdering BASTARD _ tattooed on my chest.” Sirius fell silent, the shake in his voice fading. James waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t, James opened his mouth to say something. He apparently thought better of it and snapped it shut with a click of teeth.

“I tore him apart,” Sirius said eventually. “The tattoo version of him. For days, I couldn’t do more than take off an ear for a minute before the tattoo put itself together. Well made, that. But when I wasn’t lost in the Dementors’ fog and I could remember how much I hated him, I managed to take him—it—apart.” He touched the  _ aesc  _ that sat just under his sternum, tracing the lines slowly. That one meant  _ brotherhood. _ It seemed like a suitable thing to turn ink-Peter into, at the time.

“How long did it take?” James asked. “I mean, to do… all this.” He gestured to Sirius’s chest.

Sirius shrugged. He hoped James would take that as an  _ I don’t know.  _ In truth, the symbols crawling over his torso had taken him thirty-four months, two weeks, and six days. He had tracked them by the full moons, the same way he’d tracked everything else since the age of twelve, scratching tally marks into the stone sill of the small, narrow window with Padfoot’s teeth.. What had started as a way to touch his magic and anger had turned into an anchor for his sanity and self. He spend days trying to recall the runes he’d been forced to study as a young boy, even using the moment from his childhood that the Dementors dredged up to force himself to notice the scrolls of wards and old spells that Orion had kept in his study.  _ Gyfu _ for balance,  _ gar _ for sacrifice and wisdom,  _ nyd _ for need, entire curses in Enochian and Hebrew that Sirius thought he had once seen on a trip to Borgin and Burkes at the age of six or seven.

As his mementos of his friends faded and moved under his skin, so did all the things they had taught him. His optimism and warmth bled away with James’s antlers. His trust was pulled to pieces with Peter’s rat. His joy and patience scattered as the lily petals did.

And the moon—oh, the moon. He saved it until last, telling himself it was forbidden, that he could live without it, that no protective inscription was worth stripping himself of his last link to his old life.

In the end, he couldn’t stop himself. 

He drowned in depression and hallucinations for so long, he lost track of what season it was. He stayed longer and longer as Padfoot, even when awake instead of just while he slept, and then he mostly slept. He ate less and less, and then not at all. None of this was unusual for Azkabanis, but in this deep and endless intensity, it was unusual for Sirius, who latched onto his innocence and his desire for revenge to keep him tethered.

On his fifth day without food, and as the moon peaked bright and full, he started to pull apart its twin on his chest. He stole just enough magic that it centered him, and turned it over and over in his mind like a worry stone until it wore away. Then he waited until he fell back into the hole of his madness.

Sometimes he thought he was in 12 Grimmauld Place, locked in the cellar again, and he kept finding more and more passageways but none of them led out. Sometimes he heard Remus shouting at him. Sometimes he sat in the corridor between the sitting room and the nursery at the Potters’ place, listening to Harry cry and knowing Lily and James were dead on the floor and not being able to do a damn thing. Once, when a shrill and wild shrieking cackle echoed through his cell, he was reminded vividly of seeing Bellatrix dissect a garden gnome. It took a long and unmeasurable stretch of colorless time for him to realize it probably  _ was _ Bellatrix, enjoying her own insanity somewhere else in the prison.

Whenever Sirius became aware of four or five plates of rotting, uneaten food in his cell, he siphoned another pebble of magic from the moon on his chest. That was the goal, at least; sometimes he swam up from nightmares and emptiness and canine respite to find a week’s worth of disregarded meals tossed haphazardly through the bars of his cell by his Dark jailers. In his increasingly rare lucid moments, he knew he was only doing what he needed to survive, only keeping himself on the edge of sanity for when someone—anyone—finally realized he did not belong there. In his muddy and maddening delusions, he was convinced that every piece of the tattoo he stole took another piece of Remus’s own soul and fed it to the Dementors through his black heart. His  _ Black heart _ , ha. Sometimes his visions showed Remus on the ground before him, bloodied and still, with a vicious bite mark in his side, overlapping the faded gleam of Greyback’s own old bite. On the better days, Sirius recognized Padfoot’s incisors, and not a straight and even ring of magically straightened, aristocratic human teeth.

Sirius told James none of this—not the struggles or what passed for triumphs out in the North Sea. James had not asked and, more importantly, Sirius doubted he would understand. Instead, Sirius clenched his teeth and let the memories wash over him like cold water while James pondered his tattoos with an intense expression.

When James glanced up again, Sirius expected another lecture, or an explanation of another bizarre purgatorial rule, but instead James asked, “Can you change them back?”

Sirius opened his mouth to object, but James’s expression wasn’t just curious anymore. His eyebrows were drawn tightly together and his mouth was pressed into a thin line. 

“Well, I—”

“Please,” James said softly, and when he looked up Sirius thought he had tears in his eyes.

“I don’t—I haven’t tried. Let me just—” Sirius wasn’t sure how to change anything on purpose in this place. He closed his eyes and tried to feel around for the memory of his old tattoos, the way he had felt for them in prison. He found all the edges of the old shapes, and tried to put into them the old emotions. He wasn’t sure it had worked at all until James made a soft, small noise, Sirius glanced down at himself and saw most of the old pieces—but instead of a rat, there was a young stag, his antlers smaller than the ones that stood for James. He ducked under the larger antlers as if they were low branches and looked curiously at the lilies.

“Harry,” James breathed, reaching out and touching the image. Sirius shivered at his touch, despite—or maybe because of—its gentleness. James traced the outline of the young buck until it seemed he may have forgotten what he was doing. After some time, he let his hand drop and looked Sirius in the eyes again. 

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re—what?” Had James ever apologized to him for  _ anything? _ Had he ever had to? Sirius didn’t think so. 

“I’m sorry,” James repeated. “For not thinking of what prison meant to you. For not respecting what… what you did. For me. For Harry. I don’t pretend to understand it all, or agree with practically any of it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened. And I’m sorry for trying to make that about me.”

“Er—apology accepted, mate.” Sirius rubbed the back of his neck, which was growing hot with embarrassment, as he shook James’s offered hand. “I only have my own life, y’know? I suppose you have a wider view. Of the past, or whatever. From up here, I mean.”

“What do you want, Sirius?” James asked, but his tone was kind instead of annoyed.

“What?” Sirius was beginning to feel like a foreigner on holiday. Nothing James was saying made sense right away and it led to much cocking of heads and furrowing of brows.

“I mean, what… what do you want this to be like? This place? Lily and I, we had a certain set of experiences and we were told that this was how it had to be, but bollocks to that.” James clapped a brotherly hand to Sirius’s bare shoulder. “You went to prison trying to bring justice for us, and you tried your best to raise our son as best as you could… What do  _ you _ want?”

“Is it not obvious?” Sirius asked with a wry twist of a smile. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted. All I want, in this place or any other place, is Remus.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Here’s my tumblr post ](https://fox-wolfanddog.tumblr.com/post/171163612004/in-the-fics-im-writing-sirius-has-a-wizarding) that lists the image sources for my photoshopping of Sirius’s tattoo.  [ This is the image ](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/14/5c/38/145c38e4b75959587fa8cce534c30f62.jpg) I used for reference of his Azkaban tattoos and  [ this is the amazing Reddit comment ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/comments/341kp8/harry_potter_movies_what_do_sirius_blacks_tattoos/) I used for meanings. I really liked the aesthetic of the prison tattoos so I found a way to make them work.
> 
> As always: the  [ WTTU OST on Spotify ](https://open.spotify.com/user/128749732/playlist/3CryWLMgVs06jORiRmU2gn) which updates as I add songs to the fic. Also,  [ my tumblr for HP fandom & fic ](http://fox-wolfanddog.tumblr.com) . I’m not on a lot right now because I fell face-first into Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes after Infinity War. Sorry?
> 
> Cheers to  [ dolarhyding  ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolarhyding) for asking me for more of this fic and kicking my ass into gear…. several months ago. I got hung up on not wanting to research rune meanings and then took forever to post. Good news though—much of the next chapter is already written, and in it we rejoin the canon timeline! Woo!
> 
> Thanks for reading so far <3


	6. oh death, where is your sting?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius steps through yet another archway, and sees what he has left behind in the wake of his fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh this is the angst that never eeeeeeends, it just goes on and on my friiiiiiiends.
> 
> Because everyone needed their least favorite scene in OOTP written from a different POV. I know, I hate me too. 
> 
> Much of the action and dialogue in this chapter is adapted from OOTP, which is JKRs and not mine, because if it were mine then Sirius probably would have lived. It’s used for accuracy, etc.
> 
> Thanks to [MisforMoony ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisforMoony/pseuds/MisforMoony)and my partner AS for the beta-read, and to M again for sitting with me to brainstorm the next few chapters and figuring out the shit-show that is the Marauders’ Era timeline until 2am

> __ At the end of the line   
>  __ There's no more time   
>  _ And you go it alone   
>  _ _ You can never come home   
>  _ __ At the end of the line
> 
> — **_Noah Gundersen, “[Oh Death](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7qRmi10kLU)”_ **

  
  


There was nothing quite as surreal as seeing one’s own body falling to its death. As he watched his own tumbling through the archway, he found he was rather fixated on it. He had never seen himself face to face, only reflected, and it was amazing how much of a difference that made. And had he always looked so worn and tired? He felt pulled towards the event. He wanted to follow his own body as it fell, and wondered briefly if he could do that. Would it start a loop? Would be observe himself arriving in the afterlife?

Then his thoughts were interrupted. “SIRIUS! SIRIUS!”

He turned towards the voice and out of his passive reverie, and he saw his godson rushing down the steps and towards the raised platform where the stone arch rested. Reflexively, Sirius reached towards Harry’s arm as he ran, meaning to grasp him and to stop his frantic momentum. His hand—paler and more gaunt than it had been moments ago with James; he supposed he had gotten old again—passed right through the sleeve of Harry’s robes as if they were air. There was no sensation or sound, just… a lack of touch. The presence of absence.

Then there were arms emerging from Sirius’s chest, which would be a strange thing under normal circumstances but was just vaguely annoying in these. Sirius turned towards whoever had stepped behind him—stepped  _ into _ him, about to give them a piece of his mind, and found himself nose-to-nose with Remus.

_ Oh, _ Sirius thought, that strange, numb fog the archway had given him starting to burn off. This seemed to be a pattern.  _ I’m watching him watch me die. _ He stepped sideways reflexively as Remus went forward and grabbed Harry tightly around the chest. The image was a strange echo of several dozen times he had done similar things with James, preventing him from bolting off into some wild scheme or another, but Harry was shorter than his father, and Remus had gotten so  _ old. _

“There’s nothing you can do, Harry—” Remus said, his mouth close to Harry’s ear and his voice low and firm. If Sirius had not seen the cords standing out on his neck and jaw and the stark, moon-like paleness of his face, he may have thought Remus was chiding a rowdy student.

“Get him, save him, he’s only just gone through!”

“It’s too late, Harry—”

“We can still reach him—”

Harry was struggling viciously, but Remus held him tightly and the muscles in his arms that Sirius had always so admired were taut and unforgiving. Physically, Remus could not have been more present, but Sirius saw the way his eyes glazed over and his hands shook.

“There’s nothing you can do, Harry… nothing… he’s gone.”

“He hasn’t gone! SIRIUS!  _ SIRIUS _ !”

Sirius understood suddenly what James had been saying about watching people grieve for him. The look on Harry’s face did not belong to a fifteen-year-old boy. The look on Harry’s face did not, in fact, belong to anyone. It was an animal thing, crazed and uncontrollable, making him nigh unrecognizable. He was fighting Remus as if Remus was Voldemort himself instead of one of the few caring adults he had.  _ Was this what I was like after James? _ Sirius wondered, awestruck. He had never stopped to think about what his temporary insanity looked like from the outside.  _ Merlin, no wonder they convicted me. _

“He can’t come back, Harry,” Lupin said, voice breaking on Harry’s name, as if Harry’s presence made it real and not just another nightmare. “He can’t come back, because he’s d—”

“HE—IS—NOT—DEAD!  _ SIRIUS!” _

Whether acceptance was beginning to bleed into Harry or the yelling was using excess energy, Sirius didn’t know, but Remus was dragging him slowly away from the dias. Harry’s eyes stayed rapt and waiting, staring at the curtain. Sirius stepped out of their way, his chest tight, and watched as realization broke into Harry’s stare.

Sirius also became aware of his surroundings beyond the struggling pair in front of him. Dumbledore was gathering the Death Eaters that had been knocked out or disabled, and Kingsley was dueling Bellatrix in Sirius’s absence. There was a fierce expression on his face, and while Sirius didn’t go any closer, he thought he heard words like “avenge” and “consequence.” Sirius felt a sudden surge of gratitude and shame. He had been thinking of so few people since his death—a scant few moments ago according to the people he was watching, but days and days ago for him—that it had never even occurred to him that the Order was still fighting; that he had died mid-battle in a chain of battles in an uncertain war. When he had gone to Azkaban, he had done so at the end of it all. The Potters dead, Voldemort vanquished, the Wizarding world in celebration and on the edge of transition and maybe even peace. He had felt no guilt in abandoning that world.

But this, this was different. All around him were people still fighting, not just here in the bowels of the Ministry, but across the country. Harry, who was now sitting beside his friend—Longbottom’s boy?—with a look of shock and emptiness on his face, was not free of this. Harry’s friends were not free of this. Remus, survivor of lycanthropy, poverty, prejudice, and two wars, was not free of this.

Only Sirius, once again running from the worst of things.

“Let—let’s find the others,” Sirius heard Remus say, a hand still wrapped loosely around Harry’s bicep. Of course. In the midst of crisis, Remus was always looking for others. He looked pale and pained, and his voice was unsteady.

“Remus, I can—” Sirius began, moving toward him. But his hand met nothing instead of Remus’s thin shoulder, and Sirius fell silent.  _ I’m dead, _ he reminded himself grimly. There was no comfort in the thought.

There was a bang and a shout, and Remus, Harry, and Sirius all looked for the source. Kingsley was on the ground, and Bellatrix was running from the dias. Dumbledore shot a spell at her, but she turned it aside without trouble. Sirius thought, not for the first time, that Bella was a damn good witch.  _ If only I had managed to reach her, _ he thought bitterly.

“Harry—no!” cried Remus, but Harry was already running.

“SHE KILLED SIRIUS!” bellowed Harry. “SHE KILLED HIM—I’LL KILL HER!”

Despite himself, Sirius felt a surge of pride as he bolted after Harry.  _ James’s son, through and through, _ he thought.  _ And my godson, for certain. What a man he will be. _ And then, on the heels of that— _ if he makes it long enough to be a man. _

That was war, wasn’t it? Something you got used to, until one day it hit you on the side of the head like a bag of Galleons. Yes, Harry was a good boy, a good young soldier. And like all young soldiers—here, in his mind, Sirius saw James and Lily; Marlene and Dorcas; Caradoc Dearborn; Benjy Fenwick; Alastor Moody’s whole and handsome face; Peter with his head back, laughing—he would be gutted before the war was over, whether his side won or lost.

Harry, Bellatrix, and their unseen follower had reached a room Sirius didn’t remember seeing on his own way into the Department of Mysteries, when he was still alive. There was a large glass tank, and there were things swimming in it, but Sirius had no time to look more closely before Bellatrix sent the tank into the air and upended it over Harry. Harry slid wildly through the room, past more of his fellow child soldiers. Sirius saw Hermione lying on the ground and hoped desperately that she was alive. What a brilliant girl she was.  _ The Order will need her, _ thought Sirius desperately.  _ She has to be alive. _

Bellatrix had made it into a hallway that had lift doors, and Harry and Sirius were following, but she slammed the door behind her. Sirius found himself trapped in the spinning wall itself and was momentarily glad that death did not come with motion sickness. 

“Where’s the way out?” Harry shouted into the nothingness, glancing around. Sirius glanced around also, and saw that one of the doors had several wild, unmistakeable hairs caught in the latch. 

“Harry, here!” Sirius shouted. But that was useless, Harry could not hear him. Sirius grabbed at the doorknob, forgetting in his desperation that he could not turn it.

The door popped open anyway.  _ Damn Department of Mysteries, _ Sirius thought. Harry was already running through, and Sirius bolted to catch up to him, but the door had already slammed and the doorways whirled in their mad circle. Why did they not let him follow?

“Because I’m here for Remus,” he realized aloud. The doorways stopped moving and he stood for a moment, stymied. Then a door to his left glowed a soft silver, not unlike a Pensieve, and Sirius yanked it open and went through it. He found himself back in the room with the broken tank, and he saw that the things now lying on the floor were brains with… additions. He also saw that there was someone now tending to the young people who had been injured there.

“Bud Harry—!” the Longbottom boy said, one hand holding a handkerchief to his nose. 

“Dumbledore went after him,” said a tight and tired voice. “There’s nothing else we can do.” Sirius turned to see Remus kneeling beside Hermione and passing his wand slowly down the length of her torso. There was that professorial voice again, likely perfectly believable to the teenagers in the room; but Sirius knew better. Sirius saw the knots of muscle where Remus’s jaw clenched, and the way his eyes would not stay focused on what he was doing but instead glanced around, as if waiting for someone else to come into the room.  _ Waiting for me, _ Sirius thought. Well, no matter, when he was done here he would go find the  _ current _ Remus, and they would—

And that’s when the grief washed over him. This was the current Remus. Sirius was not in a Penseive, he was _ here _ , watching, and there was nothing else he could do. This was not a memory. This was just Remus’s life, rolling forward like it always had, only this time Sirius’s had ground to a sudden halt behind him. He could sit and watch Remus every moment for the rest of Remus’s life, and it wouldn’t matter. They had crossed so many lines in their time together—bloodlines, species lines (if one were to listen to Remus, which Sirius never did on that issue), gender lines, lines between lovers and friends, between friends and family. They had conquered what Sirius had, until his imprisonment, seen as his life’s greatest mistake when Sirius told Snape about the Willow. They had survived duel after duel and disaster after disaster in a great war. They had even managed to find something like peace in their sporadic moments after Sirius’s escape. Those weeks lying low at Remus’s were some of the softest in his life. But here was something they could not beat, a divide too wide to meet in the middle. Sirius was dead, Remus was alive, and that was a gap they could not bridge. 

Remus was helping a baffled but conscious Hermione to her feet now, grimacing to himself as some wound or ache protested the effort. Was Remus injured badly? Was he ignoring it to give everyone one less thing to worry about? That was such an entirely Remus thing to do. There was a tug of affection through the haze of distraught realization Sirius swam through. He had told James he wanted nothing but Remus, and he meant it, even now.

Remus walked slowly with Hermione for a few steps before allowing her to sit back down, apparently satisfied with her well-being. Ron was laughing at something neither Sirius nor anyone else could see, but Remus seemed satisfied that he was physically unharmed. Ginny Weasley was sitting a short distance away, head resting on the stone wall. Her breathing was deep and even, and Sirius thought perhaps she had fallen asleep. He remembered mornings after his own Order missions where he couldn’t remember the end of the mission itself, let alone how he’d gotten home and into bed.  _ And I was of age then, _ he thought.  _ God, these kids. _

“Remus?” said a small voice. Remus and Sirius both looked up and saw Tonks, her face unusually solemn and her hair a respectable shade of brown. Sirius, having grown up around Blacks his whole life, thought perhaps that was even her natural shade. 

“Nym—Tonks. Yes?”

“Moody says—” She paused and cleared her throat. “He s-said that he t-tried his be-best but that he c-c-ca—that there’s nothing he can do about Sirius. The b-body.” She scrubbed at her face, and Sirius didn’t see tears, but thought they had been there recently. 

“Thank you,” Remus said. His voice stayed still and even, but Sirius—ever in tune with the mineuta of Remus’s body—saw the tightness in his jaw again. Now  _ there  _ was an uncomfortable thought. He had never considered where his body had ended up. He thought of the blank space in the Penseive and shuddered.  _ At least my soul made it out. _

But Remus didn’t know that, or didn’t have proof of it. And now there wouldn’t even be a funeral. He thought of missing James and Lily’s funerals, how desolate it felt, how long it had taken for the reality to set in. Oh, God.

“Lupin,” growled a new voice from the room where Sirius had died. Remus glanced at the students, which now included a bruised and quiet Luna Lovegood leaning heavily on Neville’s arm as she waved limply to Kingsley, presumably her escort. Apparently deciding they were not going to vanish or die, Remus stepped through into the room with the archway. Sirius followed. Alastor Moody was standing near one wall, his magical eye angled strangely 

“Alastor,” Remus greeted him quietly. So much quiet, so many hushed voices, as if they were afraid that to speak loudly would be to break something open.

“Dumbledore’s got ‘im to flee again. Potter’s… well, fine may not be the word, but uninjured. We’re gonna have Ministry swarming up here in about five minutes. Better go.” His eye spun around to meet both of Remus’s, and for a moment, his eyebrows knitted together.

“What’s wrong?” Remus looked over each shoulder, probably expecting one of Harry’s friends to be there, but there was no one but the two of them in the archway room.

“Nothing. Go on, grab the students and get them back to Poppy Pomfery. She won’t ask questions.”

Remus nodded and hurried back into the room with the broken tank of brains. For once, Moody’s natural eye followed him, while his magical eye stayed fixed on the point where he had just been.

  
The place where Sirius still stood.

“Glad to see you made the right choice, Black,” Moody said in a near-whisper. His war-torn face twitched into what might have been a smile. “Ghosts can’t do anything decent, anyway.”

“Don’t tell them,” Sirius said desperately. “Please. Don’t tell them I’m anywhere near them.”

Moody didn’t say anything, and for a moment Sirius thought perhaps he hadn’t seen him there at all, but then he snapped off a loose salute before turning away. Sirius watched him go for a moment before turning on the spot and hoping he couldn’t Splinch himself in the afterlife. 

_____

It turned out that, while Sirius was unsure whether or not one could Splinch in the afterlife, he  _ could _ Apparate directly into the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, wards and enchantments be damned. For a second he was caught up in just how much of a security risk this was, before remembering once again that he was dead and had less influence on Hogwarts security than Nearly-Headless Nick. Perhaps it was not Apparition at all, then, but just… undead teleportation. Lovely.

It also appeared to be quite fast, as he had just appeared in the doorway when a swift jet of silver light blew past him. It rattled the jars in Poppy’s cupboards and seemed to alert the matron, who was doing something over a large ledger, of the figure’s presence. She leapt to her feet at once and turned just in time to see a large but docile wolf appear from the silver mist.

_ Remus! _ Sirius’s heart cried, and he was unable to stop himself from going towards the Patronus. Remus had always hated that his Patronus was a wolf, even though it was, by all accounts, a normal wolf with none of the hallmarks of a lycanoid. It was smaller by a margin, and Sirius had never seen it snarl or lay back its ears, even when protecting Remus from danger.

The wolf opened its mouth in a wide, canine yawn. “Coming through the Willow with injured students. Alastor with me. Dumbledore has Harry.” Then the wolf curled up on the spotlessly clean tile floor, as if to take a nap, and vanished, leaving Sirius to sit on a hospital bed and note with distress that it did not sag with his weight while he watched Poppy Pomfery fuss over beds and curtains.

He was beginning to see what James had said before about time—it seemed unbearable to wait the half an hour it took for Moody and Remus to Side-Along the teenagers and come up to the Hospital Wing. When they did, Sirius was glad to see almost everyone on their feet—even Ginny Weasley, who more or less hopped along on one foot while using Neville and Luna as a sort of improvised pair of crutches. Hermione, however, had passed out again, and Sirius felt that same panic he had felt in the Ministry. Some of the best minds in the Wizarding world had gone over to Voldemort, last time and this time. They needed Hermione Granger on their side. On  _ Harry’s _ side.

Whether Pomfery thought all these things or not, she muttered under her breath and gently levitated Hermione out of Remus’s arms and into a turned-down bed, making sure not to jostle her. “What was she hit with?” she asked. Lupin went over to her to explain what he knew as the others found their way into chairs and beds. Sirius was struck again with admiration for them—they were at most sixteen, and yet they had suffered barely more than surface wounds and solemn, pale expressions at the hands of top Death Eaters. He had not joined the Order of the Phoenix until he was nearly eighteen, and had not fought his first Death Eater until almost nineteen. He tried to picture fifth-year Sirius, full of anger and betrayal and a temper so hot it almost burned every bridge he’d ever built, going blindly into the Department of Mysteries to face Voldemort’s lieutenants. 

_ No, _ he thought.  _ Here are better people than I am.  _ There was pride in that thought, especially when he thought of Harry, but there was also a great remorse. He had peaked sometime in 1981, and now he would never have the chance to rise above his faults. Not in life.

He sat and watched the hustle and bustle of Pomfery and several house-elves assembling potions, bandages, and spells for the wounded kids. Moody, likely already planning for whatever crisis was on the horizon, slipped away as soon as all of them had found beds. Remus, on the other hand, waited. He stood back, quiet and unobtrusive, and never asked Pomfery or the others so much as a question, but his eyes followed her every move. She went back and forth from Hermione to her classmates, seemingly unwilling to let the Gryffindor girl go more than a few minutes without a check for vitals or some other metric Sirius couldn’t see. Finally, after setting everyone’s broken bones, making Ron take a sleeping draught, and applying various healing salves to everyone, she beckoned one of the house-elves over with a tray of vials and small bottles. She opened Hermione’s mouth carefully and poured small amounts of each potion in, massaging her throat to make her swallow after each one. 

“She’ll be alright,” Pomfery said suddenly. 

“Are you sure?” Remus asked from his spot near the wall.

“Yes. Although she’ll be in quite some pain when she wakes up, and she may always be weakened on one side. I doubt she’ll notice it until she’s well towards my age.”

Remus exhaled loudly, as if he had been holding his breath. “Thank you, Poppy.”

“Are  _ you _ alright, Remus?” she asked, approaching him, her eyes narrowing with concern.

“I’m fine,” he assured her, smiling and taking her hand between both of his. This time, although he was looking, Sirius saw none of the things that told him Remus was lying. No tightness in his jaw, no flicker in his eyes, no pulling-in of his body as if to protect himself. His honesty was like a blow to Sirius’s gut.  _ Does it really not matter? Was it the kids Remus was worried about this entire time? _

“Get some rest,” Poppy said firmly.

Remus chuckled. “So you always tell me.”

“And so you never do!”

“I’ll try, Poppy. Thank you. For everything.”

Her eyes lingered on Remus for a moment before she snapped back into her normal business-like motions, clearing empty potion bottles with a charm and closing curtains around her new patients. He left quietly and slipped into the dark corridors. 

Remus went on foot across the grounds again and through the Willow. Sirius followed him automatically. He tried to shift to Padfoot but found he could not. He let his head pass into the dirt of the tunnel instead, too distracted to dwell on the strangeness. None of this made sense. Hell, Sirius was the one who had died, and he felt his grief was about to overtake him. The incongruity between Remus now and Remus as he had expected was large, but also somehow familiar. Hadn’t he felt this way before? Before, when Peter had—  

Sirius felt like someone had pulled bandages off of his eyes, or that he’d gotten his color vision back after he’d been Padfoot for a long time. Every interaction he and Remus had had since Harry’s encounter in the Triwizard maze was reeling through him like a high-speed film, to be re-examined and picked apart.  _ He was a chaperone, _ Sirius thought, stunned.  _ He was only doing the things he did to keep an eye on me, unstable fugitive, risk to the Order—  _

The truth was obviously that Remus had only been kind to him to spare Sirius’s diminished sanity after leaving Azkaban. He stayed in Grimmauld Place to keep an eye on Sirius, to keep him from running off. He’d not been a friend, but a guard dog, sicced by Dumbledore. He was a spy, the way Peter had been, only for a different master. It was the same thing, and this time Sirius couldn’t even do anything about it.

They had made it to the Shrieking Shack now, which Remus illuminated with his wand. Sirius, so entangled in his newfound certainty that he had been lied to, barely thought about this abnormality. Of course, Remus should have been able to navigate the Shack without light; and if he was Disapparating, he could do so from the southeast corner of the sitting room, they had tested it— 

But Remus did none of those things. In fact, he had gone still in the middle of the mostly-empty space, watching dust pass in front of his wandlight. “Goddamn you,” he whispered.

“What?” Sirius said, called out of his thoughts suddenly and forgetting he could not be heard.

“ _ Goddamn you,” _ Remus repeated hoarsely, and it sounded so much like a response that Sirius, for a moment, let himself hope. He reached out a hand to touch his lover’s back. Perhaps Remus could sense him here, perhaps he could— 

Sirius’s hand passed through nothing. His hand  _ was _ nothing.

There was a cry and a clatter, and the light spun wildly across the room. Remus had flung his wand aside, but why—?

_ “GODDAMN YOU, SIRIUS!” _ His wand had disturbed more dust, and it floated through the stale air and crooked light, casting mad patterns on his face. Remus’s hands were knotted in his own hair and his knees trembled, shook, and gave way. He landed knees-first on the boards of the Shack with a  _ thunk _ and no effort to brace himself. 

And then he screamed. There were no words, no thought, no hesitation, only noise and breath and Remus’s clawing hands and open mouth. When he ran out of breath, he drew another, and shrieked again. Remus, whom Sirius had seen transform into a feral animal against his will once a month with no more than a few groans, who had once lost most of his left arm to a particularly nasty battle of motorcycle versus Death Eater and never said so much as  _ ouch _ , who had just gotten half a dozen children out of the Department of Mysteries mostly unharmed in the midst of a fight with Dark wizards, was screaming so wildly that saliva flew from his mouth and his fingernails had begun drawing blood at his hairline. 

If Harry’s grief had been animal, Remus’s was supernatural. Indeed, in all his life—and now death—Sirius had never seen anything like it. He had heard things like “pulling your hair out” or “clawing at your face” or “mad with grief,” but he had always thought them to be poetry about something more felt than seen. Of course, whenever he had seen others grieve, they had known he was there. This time, Remus thought he was alone, in a place known only for its screams. He had always turned into an animal safely here; why not again?

_ Oh, you demon, _ Sirius thought from somewhere far away.  _ You miserable, soul-sucking creature. Look what you’ve done to him. Look who he has become because of you. _

His face was ashen, making his eyes look blackened rather than tired. His fingernails, though always kept properly short, were dragging raw, red scrapes down his cheeks. After a minute, some of the tears on his face were tinged with pink. His breath hitched, then caught, then stuck in his lungs until his chest heaved but he couldn’t breathe. When his cheeks became too raw, he slammed closed fists on the grimy wooden floor. Sirius used to tease Remus when he left the room to blow his nose out of propriety. The Remus before him could not have been more contrary to that memory: tears, snot, spit, and sweat dripped from his hairline, his nose, his eyes, his mouth. Sirius had done much reading on lycanthropy since his second year, when he discovered Remus’s affliction, and in many old books, there were illustrations of horrible, painful, mind-rending transformations. For all the years he had been with Remus, he had never seen him match the terror and pain in those depictions.

Until now.

If Sirius had a body, it would have failed him. As it was, even the illusion of a physical form seemed to have left him here, on this side of the archways. On  _ Remus’s _ side of the archways. He stood, incorporeal and devastated as Remus broke apart in front of him, writhing on the dusty, splintered floorboards. 

Eventually Remus’s sobs quieted; probably, Sirius realized, due to lack of energy rather than an ebbing of grief. His breath still came in ragged gasps, and he muttered something over and over under his breath. It took Sirius a minute to catch it, but when he did, he felt he died all over again.

“I love you,” Remus was saying between hiccups and barely stifled sobs. “I love you, I loved you. How dare you? I love you.”

Sirius listened to the litany until it—and Remus—faded into a fitful and unsatisfying sleep. Then he turned around to the pale arch and its silver hanging, which stayed almost always at his back, and went back through.

For once, the cool, cream marble of the afterlife was a relief. Sirius thought that perhaps it was the last relief he’d have for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used to have a wolfstar-specific tumblr at [@fox-wolfanddog](http://fox-wolfanddog.tumblr.com) but I suck at checking it?
> 
> Since my anonymity is no longer necessary, my personal tumblr is [@neargoddamninvincible](http://neargoddamninvincible.tumblr.com) and my writing blog is [my actual book.](http://whereitglows.tumblr.com>@whereitglows</a>%0A%0AComments%20are%20amazing;%20this%20is%20the%20longest%20fic%20I've%20ever%20embarked%20on%20and%20at%20this%20point%20is%20one%20of%20the%20longest%20things%20I've%20ever%20written,%20period,%20except%20for%20like%201%20WIP%20and%20<a%20href=)
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me!


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